This Spring I had the honor of working with the Special Education class at San Jose Middle School. We had a great time working on a variety of projects all relating to the proportions and features of the face. We started by drawing faces using an “eyewidth” measure to place the features more accurately.
student drawings exploring facial features and proportions
Next, we made fun face collages using random elements and colorful accents for more practice. This was one of those exciting 1-session projects that made everyone laugh.
Student collages
For the next project we incorporated a celebration of the Chinese New Year by painting and assembling paper dragon masks from pre-cut parts. This took a lot of patience and practice of fine motor skills.
Paper dragon masks
Finally, we made stuffed self-portraits from recycled paper bags. Each young artist drew and cut out a face shape, and then they chose a skin tone color and painted their pieces. They later drew a self-portrait on their painted bag, and then stapled the sides together, leaving only enough room to stuff with batting or paper. It was a challenging project, but the experience and results were so worth it!
