Paint Your Self-Portrait

You’ve seen how artists like Pablo Picasso create self-portraits. Now it’s your turn to make a self-portrait by designing and painting a composition using a defining artistic technique.

Look carefully at the self-portraits included in this issue of Scholastic Art. What choices does each painter make about the techniques he or she uses to depict the setting, clothing, and objects? Do these choices reveal something personal about each artist? Keeping these iconic self-portraits in mind, cut out magazine images that have meaning for you. Look for a variety of images that could be used to create the background, middle ground, and foreground in your composition. Look for colors and textures that will energize your composition. Find an old photo of yourself at home or take a new digital photo and print it. Begin experimenting with your composition. Choose one background image, and then add one or more photos of yourself in the foreground. Incorporate other images. Use cropping, framing, gesture, or repetition in unexpected ways. Once you are happy with your composition, glue each image into place.

Tip: The scale of your images will affect how realistic or abstract your composition looks.

Insert your collage into a clear plastic sleeve. Use a ruler and a permanent marker to draw a grid on the plastic sleeve. Then use a ruler and a pencil to lightly draw a matching grid on your canvas paper. This grid should be directly in proportion to the grid on your plastic sleeve. Sketch the basic shapes from your collage onto your canvas paper with a pencil. Use the grid to make sure that your drawing is to scale.

Tip: Sketch only the structural shapes. You’ll paint the details later.

Look at the paintings in this issue of Scholastic Art again. Notice the techniques that each artist uses to paint his or her self-portrait. For example, Vincent van Gogh uses line in his work on this page, and Horace Pippin simplifies the shapes in his work on this one. 

Prepared by: Heather Drayzen, Salk School of Science, New York, New York