All Kinds of People - Myself

Our physical self and our appearance is one of the most interesting things in the world to all of us. For this reason artists throughout history have drawn and painted self-portraits. Artists such as Rembrandt have given us their life story in visual form by painting themselves at different times during their lives. The following art activities explore this theme.

Activity 1

• Ask children to make a collection of photographs of themselves from different times in their lives.
• Talk about and discuss how faces and features change over time.
  
• Have a collection of mirrors available for them to look in detail at themselves.
  
• Ask them to draw self-portraits of themselves while looking at their reflection in a mirror.
• Discuss with them what parts of the portrait they liked best or which parts might be improved.
  
• Do further drawings adding extra detail or colour.
  

Activity 2

• Make a collection of magazine pictures of people in action situations.
  
• Make some simple jointed card puppets and use them to show various actions.
  
• Ask the children to draw portraits of themselves doing something (e.g. playing football, swinging, running a race, etc.) Label, display and discuss.
  
• Was the action drawn well and how might it be improved by adding further detail.
  

Activity 3

• Read and discuss stories or poems about giants.
  
• Use the internet to discover facts about the tallest people who have ever lived.
  
• Write and draw about them.
  
• Ask children to make full-length portraits in cooperative groups.
  
• One child at a time lies on a length of paper and partners draw around him/her to create an outline.
  
• The portrait can be completed using paints or collage materials.
  

Activity 4

• Talk about and discuss fingerprinting and how each of us has unique prints.
  
• Allow each child to take a set of his/her own fingerprints using a good quality stamp-pad and use a magnifying glass to examine them in detail and see how each set is different.
• Make a pencil drawing of what a fingerprint looks like.
  
• Use other parts of the body for printing purposes e.g. hands or feet.
  
• Print in various colours, cut out the resulting shapes and use them to create patterns or mobiles.
• Discuss how we might create a group/class picture using these cut out shapes.