Making self-portraits: our first steps

Our inquiry into toys is proving rich and exciting. Right now, it is branching in different directions, giving us different paths to pursue.

One of the branches concerns the portraits of children with their toys that we have been looking at. Some of the portraits are over a hundred years old. It has been interesting to see how toys have changed - or not - over time. We have also noticed how favourite toys tell us something about the personalities of the children in the photos. Take a look at the wonderful images on the Te Ara website, if you're keen to follow up this discussion at home. 

This term, we have also been working on developing our observation and sketching skills, and we're keen to use them for a major project. So, this week, we have begun an on-going project to explore different ways to represent ourselves in self-portraits.

We started with some photos of ourselves with favourite toys.

With our photos to hand, we made practise sketches of ourselves with our toys on whiteboards. We tried hard to think about making our drawings big enough, using large, clear shapes. Then we added details. We had to look carefully at the photos to make sure we got things like our hair just right. 

We were so pleased with the results, we made copies and framed them up for our class gallery.

Drop by and take a look.

And, finally, here's a sneak peak of the large-scale portraits we're working on now. (These are for the Arts Celebration in term 3, so we're not going to give away all our secrets just yet!).