Gustave Courbet
“Desperate Man (Self Portrait)”
1843
7th & 8th Graders started their unit on portraiture by answering the question: Why do artist make portraits? They went on a hunt to find famous portraits that would help them answer the question. They then posted and shared their voice on our Padlet Page (more on this later).
After we had some ideas as to why, we dove into making our own portraits. The first thing students did was make a pre-instruction portrait. This was done so they could see their growth at the end. With the help of some really cool resources from http://tmatthewsfineart.blogspot.com ( The blog of a wonderful artist who helps others embrace their creative side), As a class we looked at some of the most common mistakes made when drawing portraits.
The image was than compared to a real face. This really helped students!
Students spent a few days reviewing how to map out the face and practiced areas that they didn’t feel confident in. With the help of pinterest they looked at various ways other artists draw eyes/nose/mouth etc.
The last step was to add some shading. This is the area almost all students did not even attempt on their preliminary portraits. We practiced a couple different techniques and used symbols to show where to put our values on the below template.
The photos below were taken as students compared their before and afters. They were amazed at how much they improved.
createyourARTout 
this is awesome!!!!
These are great! I love to see the improvement after instruction!