Full body self portrait 1st grade

Full Body Self Portraits  in First Grade 

Students viewed various examples of full body portraits. We spent a lot of time looking at Thomas Gainsborough's portraits, especially his painting of  The Blue Boy. I explain that Gainsborough loved to do landscapes but painted portraits for money. X-rays of the painting also showed that he had painted a dog on the portrait but painted over it. Kids are also over whelmed when I tell them how much a painting sold for at an auction. This one sold for about 9.3 million (today's worth) in 1921. 

I also showed them various costumes from different time periods. Students could draw themselves as anything  they wanted. They could be a superhero, a knight, a princess...anything!

I had the students stand up and we talked about how our head was an oval, how wide our neck was, what shape our trunk, arms, legs etc. were and how long our arms were in proportion to our bodies. 

I gave direct instruction on how to draw a body. They then could use a mirror to draw their faces. 

 Students then set to work on adding their clothes and backgrounds. We used crayons to color.

Lastly we painted watercolors over the whole thing.  

When it was dry we framed them with construction paper. The children could then write about their projects in their classroom.