Marbled Paper Self-Portraits

Students completed this project a while ago, but the work is too amazing not to share it here!

Students began this project by thinking about dynamic compositions.  One way students can easily relate to the concept of composition is by asking them to pose like they would for their annual school photo in the fall. Students immediately know that they should sit up straight, look at the viewer, smile. Asked how much of their body would be seen in such a photo, students knew right away that the camera would frame them from torso or shoulders up only.  

 

Most schools use this composition, or one quite similar!

Due to that tradition, when students are asked to draw self-portraits, they often immediately go to that composition. It feels safe. This project asked them to consider other compositional formats as well. Students began with at least three small sketches of ways they could compose a self-portrait. Here is an example from a student's sketchbook:

Next, we tied in mood as an element of composition in self-portraiture tradition. As the subject of the image, do you want to avoid the viewer's gaze and look somewhere else? What feeling does it give the viewer to see you looking at your shoes, or off into a corner?  When we only see half a somber face, what does that mean the subject might be doing or feeling? What if we see half of a grinning face? 

In addition to mood created by composition, we created a color mood with marbled paper. Using various combinations of warm and cool colors to evoke a feeling, students experimented with designing artful swirls and dots. The choices in color, and its location and intensity, all give form to creating a strong feeling in the work.

This marbled paper was the bottom layer, on top of which students made a drawing on transparency in black marker, allowing the marbled paper to show through. The marbling was lots of fun; we used the shaving cream + liquid watercolors approach, which produced vibrant results. The results of this project yielded a great variety!

It freed up lots of young artists to have alternatives. There is nothing wrong with tradition, however, and even after making many sketches some students decided that a traditional head-and-shoulders portrait was what looked best. Here are several more to enjoy.