5 Easy Steps to Making an Expressionist Self-Portrait.

Grades 4th-9th

In this lesson students will create a self-portrait in an Expressionist style.   

Step 1:   Students should first learn about the Expressionist movement and study works of art by Edward Munch, especially "The Scream."

Step 2: Before this studio and before you show the video you need to take digital pictures of your students making some kind of expression.  Then print them off on a full 8.5x11 size paper.  This can be printed in black and white. 

Step 3: Make sure that you have all of the materials listed below.  Also you should practice making the prints a few times before hand.  That way you are much less likely to mess up a students drawing.

Step 4: On the day of the studio set up a printing station.  At your desk or in the back of the room at a spare table would be fine.  You don't need a lot of space. 

Step 5: Show this video to your students, and then let them do their project.  I have found that it takes about 45 minutes for the whole class to do the drawing and complete all of the monoprints and then another 45-50 minutes to color it in. 

Materials

•  An 8.5x11 photo of each student making some kind of expressive face
• One piece of transparency film per student
• One black vis-a-vis per student
• A fine mist bottle full of water, I use an old Fabreze bottle
• A box of tissues
• a rolling pin
• Crayons for the students, with plenty of color choice

Student Examples

Let me help you teach Art to your students.

I think that my first post should be a brief explanation about what this is all about.  This is a blog that will post Art Lesson that will always include a video that you can show directly to your students.  It's like having a visiting Art Teacher in your room.  It is my hope that this will be a great resource for new Art Teachers and Classroom Teacher who are required to teach art.  In fact it is the Classroom Teacher that I really hope to help. Art teacher in their first few years of teaching will find this helpful at first, but I suspect that as you develop your own style and curriculum you will use this resource less and less.  Classroom Teachers, however, I know that many of you are expected to teach a Fine Arts Curriculum, having been given little to no training to do so.  I know that you want to do more, but you have limited time or resources to commit to teaching Art.  However, I believe, as I am sure you do too, that children should have a quality education that includes a quality art education as well.  It is my hope that through this videos that all students can be taught the Arts not just crafts.  Now let me be clear on this; Art is different then crafts.  You can find tons of crafts on the internet and in books at the library, but many of these are not teaching art.  Art should teach creativity, not direction following.  It should inspire the student to make their own choices and make mistakes.  Teaching Art should always include a lesson in Art History or a major design theme.  When you have 25 snowmen that all pretty much look the same, what you have is a great winter holiday craft, but it's not Art.  Art is something that the student will be proud of because they have made it distinctively their own.  It's something that the child will save and 15 years later, open up a box, see it and say, "Hey, wow, I made that!"  This is what I strive to accomplish with my student and I want you to be able to do it with your students.  If you are a Classroom Teacher, then please feel free to play the videos directly to the students.  In fact I originally made these videos for my students to watch as their instruction. I do this for several reasons.  One major reason is because the average class size at my school is 27 students and the kids can't all see when they try to gather around a table.  The other benefit to these videos is that if a student is late or absent they can easily make up instructions, I simply set them in front of the computer and push play.  Then when the video is done they have all the information as the rest of the class and can get started immediately.  Now I want to share these videos with you, so that you and your students can benefit from them too.   

-Enjoy