FOURTH GRADE . . . The Renaissance meets modern technology!

Our wall of mirror image portraits in our art show

Fourth grade self portraits began as a lesson in technology when we learned how to use Adobe Photoshop in our art class. Then we turned back the clock to the 16th century and learned about the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci. Inspired by his mirror image writing, we retouched our photos on the computer and then created a mirror image drawing of one half of the photograph.

It was not possible to upload these drawings to Artsonia because they contain photographic images. Please come by Panther Hall gallery to see all of our amazing mirror image portraits!

The second part of our self-portrait project brought us up to modern times and the magic of Adobe Photoshop. Each student began with their image and learned the basic steps to crop, re-size, and adjust the brightness scale. Then they explored the artistic filters to create these amazing transformations. A favorite transformation occurs in the Liquify window with tools that slide pixels around on the screen, bloat or pucker areas of the image, and create swirls like in a Vincent van Gogh painting. Other students used filters to change the look of the photograph into a pencil drawing or a carved image.

There are many photo editing programs and apps out there for people to use with their digital images, but the special effects cannot be controlled or customized. With Photoshop, our fourth graders learned how to create an original work of art out of a photograph, all on their own!