Portrait with Proportion

It's Face Time!

No, you don't need an iPhone for this kind of face time, you just need a pencil...and an eraser.  I wanted to teach my fifth graders how to draw faces more realistically and about proportion, so portraiture was a natural option.  Now here's the kicker...I didn't teach this lesson.  Well, not really.  I just reminded kids of the main points while I let a 9 year old do all of the work.  Yep, a 9 year old.  Her name is Olivia (Oli) in case you haven't seen this prodigy of a girl.  I was introduced to her online videos/blog last summer while I was teaching high school art (summer school) with another art teacher.  There was a self portrait assignment and she--the other teacher--showed these videos to the kids (shout out to Brenda Kane for introducing me to Oli).  I couldn't believe I hadn't seen these videos before and I knew I was going to share them with my kids as soon as I taught portraiture.  Enough build up already...here are the videos I showed to teach my lesson

            Episode 1
            Episode 2
In the video, Olivia is only 9, according to my calculations, she'd be 14 today...maybe 15, depending on when her birthday is.  But I digress, Oli is amazing and she breaks down the steps and proportions of a face perfectly!  And the kids really enjoyed watching her and seeing what someone their age (or even younger) is capable of...I like to think that she encouraged them to try extra hard, to match her abilities.  All I had to do, was recap the key steps and things to note while my students drew their own portraits.

I did not have students make self portraits, though some of them still attempted this, while others added facial hair and vampire teeth.  I don't know if it was the power of Oli or not, but I'll definitely give her credit for these amazing fifth grade drawings!