Who Am I?

What you'll need:

  • Large pieces of drawing paper.
  • A variety of different materials such as cotton, paper, wool, fur, leather, fake hair, ribbon, card, photographs
  • Coloured pens/pencils/paints
  • Scissors
  • Sticky Dots

Ask your puplis to create a self portrait using a selection of different materials and textures. You can use existing self portraits by famous artists as reference for class discussions.

By using artists with very different styles you can demonstrate a range of approaches to portraiture and help pupils develop their own ideas on how to portray themselves. Not all portraits are naturalistic likenesses. Some, like the examples here, are more abstract.

Discuss with your class why artists use these different techniques and what they are trying to express.

By asking pupils to create the portrait using different textures and materials, they can explore different artistic materials and techniques. eg how to show the texture of hair, smooth skin.

Encourage children to explore different types of character qualities that communicate ideas about themselves and how they would like to be seen by others, eg funny and bold, quiet and thoughtful.

Support Information

Example of Different Styles of Self Portrait

Pablo Picasso, Self-Portrait: Yo Picasso, sold for $47 million in 1989, a sum second only to the $53.9 fetched by van Gogh's Irises. Picasso painted numerous self-portraits (centre picture).

New York artist Tony Oursler is best known for projecting video images of faces on dolls, mannequins, and disembodied heads, thereby bringing to life these otherwise inanimate objects. His Self-Portrait in Yellow at Milwaukee Art Museum is a video installation with video projector, VCR, video tape, small cloth figure and metal chair (above right).

American artist, Tim Hawkinson created an unusual self portrait, which can be seen at Ace Gallery, New York. Balloon Self-Portrait, is a life-size latex sculpture cast from the artist's body, turned inside out and then inflated by an air compressor (top right).

An Edinburgh gallery has a self portrait painted by an elephant on display.

Useful Links for Further Discussion

Related themes for class discussion

Cultural diversity: display the portraits and look at the different cultures in the class
Equality and respect: discuss the differences and similarities of the children and can appreciate and respect each other.

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