Two books by Todd Parr: “It’s OK to be Different” and “Be Who You Are” (Todd Parr website) are fabulous to explore the theme of diversity with young children. The illustrations are simple and bright, and lend themselves to this activity where Prep students choose different coloured faces, hair style and accessory to make a unique portrait, and perfect to practise cutting skills!
Prep/ Foundation Victorian Curriculum lesson plan with templates, learning intentions, success criteria, example artworks.
My Prep classes were learning about use of colour to show emotions and feelings, so this activity was a good follow on to learn about warm and cool colours.
Students learnt about what an ABSTRACT portrait is, in particular ‘Senecio’ 1922 by Paul Klee to inspire making a portrait in this style using warm OR cool colours. They used a variety of materials, including: crayon, oil pastel, water colour paints and chalk pastels using various techniques in the process.
First we looked at Paul Klee’s ‘Senecio’ (1922) and discussed the style and type of artwork, the colours, the feelings or emotions the colours might convey.
LESSON ACTIVITIES:
Students used a card circle (from Supermarket pizza packaging) and followed a guided drawing to add the joined eyes, line for the nose and mouth, and shoulders. These lines are traced over heavily with a black crayon. (no smudging!) They then drew lines on the face and body to make sections.
Oil pastels were used to colour the eyes. Water colour pallet paints were used to paint the sections and can be used with varying intensity- more water for a lighter colour value) We discussed that pink is also a warm colour because it is made using red (with white.)
For the background the students use chalk pastels on the side, then spreading and smudging the colour with their finger to fill the space.
Full lesson plan available with learning intention, success criteria, discussion questions, process and techniques. Self assessment rubric for students.
These lessons were part of the Year 3 & 4 Inquiry Unit of ‘Food Sources’. We began by viewing artworks by Guiseppe Arcimboldo, completing an “I see, I think, I wonder” then shared thoughts, describing, and discussing. We watched a couple of YouTube videos about the artist, before comparing artworks and making our own inspired by Arcimboldo’s portraits.
I went to a market and bought a variety of fruit and veg including $1 bags of food on their last legs! I also got students to bring in pieces of fruit and vegetables to use to make a food portrait. I set up a table with the fruit and veg in containers, some cut in half and 5 face templates to work on. The other students were working on drawing a food face portrait.
Full lesson plan is available below with activities, video links I used, learning intentions and success criteria, Venn Diagram sheet and student evaluation sheet.
Primary School Art 