Value Portraits

For the last few months our 7th grade students have been studying drawing through self-portraiture. If you missed the post showing their All About Me Self-Portraits please take a look. For the final lesson of the unit they created these value portraits. After taking a photo of themselves on their iPads, I used the Cutouts filter in the computer program Photoshop to break down their photos into 5 distinct shades of black. The students then traced the printout of their value photos onto drawing paper and chose to recreate the values in pencil, colored pencil or paint. The project helped the students practice and understand the importance of value in two dimensional art and gave them these pretty great portraits of their 7th grade selves. Clicking on any photo below will get you to the Value Portrait Gallery. More portraits will be added in the next week or two.