"Pose"terized self

Have you ever watched how often your students stop and take selfies?  I have a few that do it all of the time.  How many pictures of yourself do you really need?

Anyways, I decided to make them use one of those selfies and turn it into an art project.  I have them pick one (some have a hard time with this step) and open in in photoshop.  Once in photoshop they need to posterize themselves.  Now if you've never done this, it can be a heck of a process.  I would explain it, but I had to go find a you tube video (and ask the computer teacher) to figure out how to do it, and I think you can find those resources yourself.

Now that they have themselves posterized, have them print it so that they can see the different levels of color that will appear on their picture.  I then had them focus on the shapes that the different layers of color make in order to draw themselves.  I had them do this on an 18x24 paper so that they get really large and almost uncomfortable with the size of themselves.  After they draw the different layers I have them color in the picture with oil pastels and baby oil.

 If you haven't learned about the baby oil/oil pastels trick you are missing out.  It is amazing how easy it is to dip q-tips into baby oil and then run it over the color to help smooth out the oil pastels.  It actually extends the life of your oil pastels because you don't need to use as much.

Brooke A.

Eli H.

Emily H.

Mikayla R.

Paige Q.

Sierra A.

Yeva S.