Bad Hair Day! (2nd)

I'm pretty sure everyone has done a variation of this project.. but oh goodness it can be used to talk about so many different things! Symmetry, line types, drawing what you see (observational drawing) not what you think you see, details, color, etc.  I used this project as a two day extension to my symmetry unity!

We began by reading the book "The Colors of Us" by Karen Katz and discussed how we are all different variations of the color brown (something we identified as being "neutral colors"). Then we went back to our tables and began working on our artwork by folding a piece of white drawing paper in half (hotdog style) - which acted as our 'line of symmetry'. During our first symmetry project we had mentioned that faces had linear symmetry - so this project simply expanded that.
Then with our paper unfolded, we began drawing our portraits by looking closely at the details on the faces of the people sitting around us (so we could work on drawing what we really saw). I did ask my students however to leave off drawing the hair for now, and to leave plenty of space at the top of their pages.
Once the basis of our drawings were completed, I showed students how we were going to draw the "hair." Students were asked to use a variety of line types (good time to review!) to create the hair! They were reminded that lines should be symmetrical and so whatever they drew on the left side - had to be reflected on the right side.
Once all the pencil drawing was done, students used fiber pens to outline their art, then multicultural crayons to color the skin and regular crayons to color the rest of the portrait.
Overall the kids were really surprised with how great they ended up drawing! :)