Fifth Grade Symbolically-Colored Self-Portraits

This student painted her hair and clothes red and blue and her skin and background are painted yellow and orange. She wrote, "I am the calming colors or red and blue. I am as happy as the yellow sunflowers."

While studying self-portraits this year, fifth grade artists learned that some self-portraits do not look exactly like the artist. Some self-portraits use symbolism to show something else about the artist, something that may not be visible.

For this project, each artist traced a photo of themselves so that their self-portrait was realistically drawn, but then they picked colors that could symbolically show something else about themselves such as their feelings, ideas, or interests.

This student painted an ombre background that has green, orange, and red, and painted his hair blue and his jacket yellow, red, and green. He wrote "My hair is blue like the sky. My jacket is yellow and green like the grass and sun. My eye brows are green like the trees. My shirt is red like a tomato."
  • This student painted himself red, blue, with small details in yellow and green and wrote "My eye is as red as fire. My nail is as green as grass. My hair is as blue as water. My name is Nasser."
This student painted herself all different shades of blue and green. She wrote, "I am as blue as sadness. I am as green as nature. I am blue/green as the ocean."

Each artist then wrote a few simile or metaphor sentences describing the colors they used.

This student painted his clothes blue and yellow and his skin and background are pink. He wrote, "My hair is as blue as the water. My jacket is as yellow as my feeling. My arm is as pink as a Fortnite llama."

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