"While visiting schools in London, Ontario, I saw these amazing plasticine self-portraits created by art teacher Amy Thibeault's grade three students. They agreed to share their artwork and describe how they made it. I hope it inspires more teachers and students to work with this wonderful medium. Great work, Amy and class!" - BR.

Click on the images to enlarge...

About The Project

"I began by asking the children to look carefully at their own skin colour (arms were the best reference points for them). We then debated, as a class, about what colours we would need to use to create the various skin tones of the students in our class. Taking that information, each child blended a large ball of their own skin colour. We put our skin tones aside and worked on applying our background colour to the work surface (hard board) .... choosing colours that would compliment our skin tones.

Once the background was complete we used a rolled- out plasticine 'snake' shape to make the outline of the head and neck. We then filled both the head and neck with more skin coloured plasticine. During the next phase of our work (facial features) we took time to feel the parts of our own faces and to move our fingers over each area, paying particular attention to the relationship one feature had to another (ie. tops of ears lined up with the middle of our eyes). We made the eyelids, then the ears, the nose, the upper lip, and then we mixed a bit of red with our remaining skin tone to create the lips and the cheeks. Throughout the process, the children would mould their fingers around a facial feature and then reposition their fingers in the same way onto their plasticine creation.

We really saw our faces come to life once we began working on the eyes. The children had to be reminded that we needed to approach this area in layers, just as we had with the background of our picture. First applying the white eyeball, then on top of that positioning the iris, and then the black pupil. The children asked for each other's advice when it came to selecting their eye colour and most children blended colours to create the perfect shade for the iris. We finished our faces by adding eyebrows and hair. I showed the children the technique of appying tiny 'snake' shapes one beside the other to create the look of hair. Again they talked with classmates to get a different perspective about the way their hair should look.

This was a highly instructional lesson that consumed approximately 6 hours of 'creating' time, over the span of three days. It was a completely rewarding experience for both myself and the students. The students are extremely proud of their efforts and have used their skills to go on and create other plasticine work with enthusiasm and confidence."

- Amy Thibeault, Teacher

More Self Portraits

Here are some more colourful self portraits from students at Leo Baeck Day School.

More Portrait Ideas

Adding a background and extra details will help the viewer learn a little more about the subject's personality. - BR