WEEK 9:  May 25th - 29th
PORTRAITURE

Artist to investigate: Kehinde Wiley, Chuck Close, Alex Garant

In visual art, a "portrait" is a painting, drawing, or photograph of a person, especially one depicting only the face or head and shoulders. Portraits can communicate a lot about the people they represent. Here are some examples of portraits, below. What might these communicate about the sitter? (The "sitter" is the person in the portrait - in the olden days, people would have to sit for a very long time to have an artist paint their portrait - there were no cameras!)
​For this art challenge, you will choose from two options to create an original portrait. 

OPTION 1: Create an original self-portrait.

OPTION 2: Create an original portrait of a human member of your family.

You may work from real life, or from photos. If you work from photos, the portrait should be made using the photos as inspiration - it should NOT be a COPY of a photograph.  The portrait you create should be a likeness of the person - it should look like them to some extent.
INSTRUCTIONS:
  1. Take a number of photographs of your sitter.  If your sitter is YOU, take a number of photos of yourself. As you photograph, think about composition - how much of your sitter do you want to show? Just a head and shoulders? Up to the waist? Or a full-body? 
  2. Choose a medium to work with. You can use anything to make your portrait. You can use traditional art supplies, like pencil, paint, etc. or use something that is not normally used to make art. Think about what colours and textures will represent your sitter best!
  3. Develop your portrait, referring to the photographs you have taken, as needed. Remember that it doesn't need to be perfect.
  4. Once the portrait is complete, send me a photograph of the portrait, and the photos that inspired it.
Here are some examples of works created by FRC students!