Symbolic Portraits
My 9th grade students have been working on a symbolic portraiture unit. They are creating monochromatic, vector-style portraits of a person significant to them, choosing a color to symbolize an aspect of their personality. We looked at examples from contemporary portrait artists including Kehinde Wiley, Amy Sherald, Hope Gangloff, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, discussing how they represented their subjects, their style, and their concepts. We learned multiple approaches to creating portraits – life drawing, drawing from reference photos, and gridding.
I had never used grids before this project, but my cooperating teacher recommended using them so I decided to give it a try. Teaching gridding has been exceptionally challenging. Many students were not yet comfortable using a ruler to measure or as a straight-edge, so they needed additional support. The gridding process took days longer than I had anticipated.
Even with all the challenges, many students were able to successfully transfer their portraits. For those who were not, we used a powdered graphite transfer process, so all students were ready to start their paintings.
