After explaining that she was looking for "those shaped wooden things that you can paint on" (shaped wooden plaques), I was able to say "Oh yeah, I have a bag of those at home. I'll bring them in tomorrow." The bag of them was produced, and several of the plaques disappeared into the depths of their portfolios. Two of the girls started painting right away, inspiring the lesson.
(A portrait of my student's best friend. The two will be attending separate colleges, so her shirt says "King" for the college she will be attending.)
I started the lesson off by introducing students to the historical context of portrait miniatures.
Resources: Artists and Ancestors, Wikipedia Entry
As the students were more advanced, I did not create a handout. I showed them my examples, and instructed them to create mini portraits of other people (not self portraits).
(These are my examples, two matching pieces. One is a self portrait, the other is my husband.)
For my pieces, I used small shaped wooden plaques. You can purchase them at JoAnn or Michaels and I am sure any other hobby/ craft store in your area. I checked the prices, and the smaller shapes are $0.69 a piece.
(This is a simple composition. The student used acrylics, and put a few coats of gesso over the plaque.)
In order to use the plaques, they must first be primed with Gesso. I ended up using fluid acrylics on my pieces, as watercolor would not adhere to the surface, but it seemed that several coats of gesso made it possible to use watercolors.
We were also very fortunate to have had a box of frames donated, so many of the students used watercolor paper instead.
(This is a great example of AP students using the project as a catalyst for their concentration pieces. The piece on the left highlights the eyes, which happened to be the student's concentration. In the piece on the right, the student has used a bike tire as a halo-like shape for his concentration, bikes.)
Even if you don't have the resources to purchase plaques or frames for students, you can still use watercolor for this assignment, just have them create a frame for the piece instead. It could be painted or a separate collaged piece.
(If you ignore the picture frames, these two pieces could have easily been complete with just the watercolor paper (right) and paper with a mat board frame (left) )
This lesson was very open-ended, which worked well for the advanced students. I will be putting together a more structured handout that could be used for other levels/ ages, which I will post at a later time.
I hope this helps to bring you some inspiration! What do you think of the project?
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