Before I colored his portrait, my drawing partner in this portrait party asked if he could go over all my purple lines in black. "It's yours when I'm done with it," I answered, "But what have you got against purple?" Happily, he changed his mind when all the other colors came together.
"You made me look like a grown up."
"You made me look like a rubber action figure."
I'd buy that action figure by the way.
(Attention teachers: If you are interested in hosting a portrait party at your school, check out the Portrait Party 2.0 that we started on Art Ed 2.0. There are lesson guides, student examples, and lots of other teachers excited to collaborate with you.)
Melissa Woodland and David Gran organized a portrait party for their students through Art Education 2.0. Melissa's Art 1 Students were paired up with David's art students from a high school in China. Students swapped photos electronically and drew each other. You can see more of the portraits on flickr and artsonia.
Kendra Farrell held an "in house" portrait party to get her art 1 class warmed up for taking risks and having fun. They did!! You can see the rest of the portraits on flickr.
this year, i added a special offer to my annual art room portrait party. if a student draws me in color, i will draw them in color.
For as long as I have been teaching, I have made this offer to my students: If you draw me (outside of class), I will draw you. At the moment, I owe portraits to about twenty kids but that just means that there is always something fun to do at lunch time.
i know it's been a long time between posts but the portrait party is alive and well offline. in addition to the ongoing portrait exchanges that my students and i have made all year, the parties have been a great classroom game for teaching everything from shading and watercolors to sighting techniques and gesture drawing. in this example, my cartooning students at Art Center for Kids used a portrait party to practice caricature and capturing a likeness.
the portrait party is two years old this month!
the portrait above was drawn by my sister, lali shaw!
my wife and i moved this month and, although we love our new home, it hasn't had internet access until this afternoon. perfect timing actually because, just this afternoon, i received a beautiful surprise from roz stendahl. she and her friends at mcba (the minnesota center for book arts) had a portrait party! they made books from their drawings and they sent me a copy! the cartoon above is by ken avidor. he opened the party with a pep talk and drew this picture of the party in progress. thanks for including me everyone!
(feel free to share your portrait swaps also. i will resume posting them in march.)
i originally drew this self-portrait as an example for my middle school students' animation class. i liked it so much though that i adapted it as an example for d.i.y. notepads and stationary and it's a portion of the illustration for the fliers for my after-school art workshops.
thanks, everyone for participating in the self-portrait party! you can resume sharing your proper portrait parties at your leisure.
this is lucie's contribution to the portrait party. lucie was born in france, lives in madrid, and runs a trilingual blog that you might enjoy!
i almost forgot to post a CELEBRITY self-portrait this month! d'oh. good thing i found this one while packing. dave mckean, one of my all-time favorite artists, drew this self-portrait comic strip for a german magazine. you can click the pic to see a bigger version. it was his response to their question "where do ideas come from?" in a written post script to the comic, mister mckean added:
"usually i go to this great mexican restuarant i know. i sit in the corner all afternoon when they're empty. i doodle in notebooks, and eventually order a plate of mixed ideas with a side order of salsa picante."if i'm really stuck, there's this address in basingstoke i write to, enclosing a stamped addressed envelope, and they send me a small bag of ideas at a very reasonable price."
martin drew his self-portrait for a squidoo lens on self-portraiture. it's worth reading!
our friend cindy passed away three months ago today. this dual portrait of her sister, wendy (above), and herself, cindy (in the mirror below), is both a self-portrait and an illustration of one of her final portrait parties. cindy's final days were filled with art. you can see it on her website, learning daily.
jeannette drew her self-portrait and a couple of others as part of a forum challenge.
betty couldn't decide if she should post her self-portrait on her own site much less contribute it to the self-portrait party. thanks, betty, for finally deciding to jump in with both feet!
chris just happened to have two self-portraits ready just in time for the self-portrait party. talk about your synchronicities!
come to think of it, gang. here's a self-portrait you can try: draw yourself old! find the wrinkles in your face. imagine what you might look like as a great-grandparent or a centenarian. i drew this as an example for a project with my second graders and it was an e-m-o-t-i-o-n-a-l experience. very worthwhile though. i found my dad and my grandpa in my face and my compassion for them exploded. it made me determined to smile more too :) i want better wrinkles than this when i turn 88.
julie invited cathy to the self-portrait party. cathy did a couple of self-portraits and wrote a sort of confessional description of her process.
it spoke to julie's self-portrait and echoed a conversation that i've had with lots of people lately: drawing from old photographs or doctoring new portraits to look younger or prettier. in the wonderful book, griffin & sabine; sabine says "it's the artist's prerogative to take liberties with her self-portrait." i agree.
in my opinion though, there's a greater beauty to be found in staying open to what you see in the mirror. there's a lovely little poem about it:
I wish I knew the beauty of leaves falling. To whom, to whom are we beautiful as we go. To whom are we beautiful as we go. - David Ignatothat's almost the point of a self-portrait, isn't it? not to demonstrate one's self but to discover one's self. julie and cathy's portraits are a great example. they opted to draw from current photographs and they struggled to show themselves as they really are. i admire that.
julie felt duty bound to produce a more up-to the minute portrait after i used a portrait she’d drawn from a thirty year old. of this new drawing, she wrote "of course the reality of the fifty year old woman looking back at me in the mirror is very difficult to reconcile with the mental image i have of me being about twenty-seven. So the results are confused to say the least. if you’re interested in tackling these conundrums yourself rama is holding a month-long self-portrait party here, and everyone is welcome."
alright people let's dig in! this actually is a great topic.
christine surprises me now and then with a masterful love letter. for example, her valentine for me this year was a pop-up card. from the outside, it's a portrait of me. when i opened it though, her self-portrait sprung out of nowhere to kiss my face. holy moly!
our illustrative girl friday, penelope, had a beautiful baby girl today! congratulations!
p.s., yes, this is a self-portrait.
atara is one of my students. she drew this self-portrait as a piece of mail art for her art class pen pal, amanda woodward.
josh and his chicken, lunch. "And Lunch is what she will be," he adds, "If she doesn’t start laying some eggs."
andre is the artist who contributed about a billion self-portraits to last year's self-portrait party. the new one is tops by the way!
julie was reluctant to share this because she drew it from an old photo. a self-portrait is a self-portrait though! especially when it looks this good.
can't you almost hear a twisted bluesy lampoon of "i can show you the world" beating in the background of laura's most recent self-portrait? most of her work is a self-portrait actually. in comic strip form.
matana, one of my students, labored over this self-portrait. it is heartbreakingly perfect.
i (portrayed above) had surprises, a portrait party, presents, good friends, karaoke, a taco bar, cake, and dance-worthy joy. from morning to night, 34 was my best birthday ever. thanks to my wonderful wife (portrayed below).
