Fifth grade artists learned about the artist Chuck Close in the art room!

We looked at his grid portraits and his fingerprint portraits and used these as an inspiration for our own self-portraits!

Each artist began by making a mini self portrait using a photo as a reference as a way to practice drawing their own features.  They added value to these by shading.

Then everyone drew themselves on a much larger piece of paper and used a ruler to measure out a 3″ grid behind their self-portrait.  Artists mixed all different watercolor paints to add color to this grid.

Then we practiced using our finger prints to add value to a value scale.  To make a darker value, more paint had to be used and the fingerprints had to be closer together.

Fingerprints were added to the self-portraits to add value and then some artists had time to paint designs onto their grid squares.