Back to School Collaborative Self-Portraits!

Sorry I've been missing since mid-August but it's been a very busy start of the year and I have a lot of exciting things to start sharing again!

This project has been floating all over the internet and I was finally inspired to do it myself after this post and this post from Cassie Stephens! Love LOVE LOOOOOVVVVEEE the way it turned out!

This was the perfect way to kick off the year and get almost all 400ish students busy making art on the first day. 

I Can draw a self-portrait and color it using one color to make a collaborative artwork.

Day 1:

1st grade through 4th grade started their first day of art with the art room scavenger hunt you see below... I got the idea from an instagram post but I just can't seem to find it again to give the credit this idea deserves! I had students work in teams and I helped read when needed. They went to the location in the room that matched the circle and found a color there. They filled in the circle on their sheet with the color they found. It was a great refresher for everyone and perfect for new students. 

After they finished the scavenger hunt I talked about the art piece they were going to create collaboratively showing them an example of another completed one so they understood why they were just using one color. I showed them my demo video of me drawing and then they got busy. I gave them white 4x4 squares, cartooning sheets to look at for inspiration, and a black felt tip pen to draw with.

Kindergarten spent Day 1 hearing the book Art Today! (HIGHLY recommend for the first day for Kinders), going on a tour of the art room, and drawing me anything they wanted so I could get a skills intake.

The book is a bit hard to find but Crystal Productions does sell it. 

Day 2:
Each table got a box of art supplies in their color only. This was SO worth taking the time to do. In the box there was colored pencils, regular crayons as well as glitter, metallic, and construction paper crayons, skinny markers, fat markers, fluorescent markers, and sharpies. They could use any material anywhere with the exception of marker on their face so it wouldn't cover their features. They also had to color the entire square.

 It didn't take the entire time for them to finish but I anticipated that so they could have time to explore new items in the art room.

After seeing Cassie's final product, if I do this again I will think of a different way to assemble or go BIGGER for a bigger impact on the walls. It was so fun watching students search for theirs!

Cassie's finished Product