Snapchat Selfies
Engaging my apathetic 8th graders is always a challenge, especially when it comes to building on skills that they do NOT like... like drawing. (For as much as they seem to enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror), middle schoolers do NOT like drawing themselves, or at least, not in a realistic way. I am convinced that this is just because of a lack of confidence.
Knowing this, I wanted my students to have somewhat of a formal portrait lesson to counter my always anticipated and much loved Surreal Portrait lesson so I decided that my 8th graders would create "selfies" that include a silly Snapchat filter over their regular faces. They were to choose one that resonated with how they currently feel about themselves. I initially thought many girls would choose the head-dress flowery one to emulate a princesses/goddess. (Many students decided to use the throwing-up-rainbow filter... I'm not sure how I should feel about that.)
The only requirement was that they could not use a filter that covered their whole face (since we still were learning how to render realistic human proportions,) and it needed to be in color. Check out the in-progress pieces. Not too shabby!
