Art Lesson: Oil Pastel Self Portrait

Lesson Two: Oil Pastel Self-Portrait

The lovely M.

M picked this pin as the inspiration for our next project.

The pinspiration.

 

Step one: Take picture and print in black and white to trace onto black construction paper

Lucy loves having M over for art lessons so that she can model all of her fashionable accessories.

Step Two: Making homemade carbon paper.

Holding the paper up to a window to makes it easier to see the lines to trace.

Ready to trace onto black construction paper. You put the paper graphite-side down onto the black construction paper, then trace the outline of the picture on the front side. This transfers the graphite to the black paper and gives you the outline of the face and features. 

If you look closely, you can see the graphite lines that transferred from the back of the paper onto the black paper.

Step Three: Bump up saturation on color copy to create extreme colors to use as reference when coloring

I demonstrated on the printed image on the right how to shade and color each section.

Wowza. Dirty screen. We used this image as a color reference for coloring.

M working away on her self-portrait.

I helped M with the eyes and outlined the section of hair in black demonstrating the kind of lines and line direction to create hair texture, and M  finished it.

M debated whether to fill the background in with yellow, like her photo reference, or to leave it black paper.  She decided to color it in,  in order to create more color balance and frame her image more. 

The awesome final product!

I thought this project turned out amazing! I hope M loved it as much as I did. A great project that I would  definitely do again. This would be a fun gift for family Christmas presents or for grandparents. You could draw portraits of each person for a gift, or give a drawing of yourself. A great mother or father's day gift. Or draw a pet portrait.  So many options.

I love using pastels on dark paper. It really makes colors stand out and adds a fun twist as you draw the highlights instead of shadows. I love it! I can't wait for next weeks lesson and new project.