Perfect Portraits

Each year I like to teach PORTRAIT to my 1st grade students as it is a great way to teach proportion, formal balance, and color blending. We also discuss what makes a portrait a portrait---when the artist focuses your attention on WHO the person is instead of what they are doing. We also learn about blending colors using oil pastels. As you can see, it makes for some interesting color. This year, I added a pattern component. The portraits were remounted on colored construction paper and different patterns were added around the "frame". We did discuss regular and irregular pattern so the students could practice both on their portraits.