THIRD GRADE . . . Painting our portraits

Portrait by Mia B.

Portrait by Ishana

Portrait by Connor

Portrait by Francesca

Portrait by Jonathan

Third graders were excited to express their personality through these colorful portraits. We blocked in the main colors of the canvas first, the skin tone, the shirt and the background designs. Our hair, the features of our faces and any other small detail designs were added as finishing touches.

Just like with our skin tones, we tried to match our hair color to best represent us in the portrait. With a wide brush we painted the hair in the same direction our hair grows, treating the paint brush as we would a hair brush. With a smaller detail brush we added eyebrows to match the hair color.

For our eyes, we painted just the center circle of the drawn eye with blue, brown or hazel. Then using the smallest brush possible, we added the black circle of the pupil, a white dot for the highlight in the eye, and a very thin line to create the upper lid, indicating the line of the lashes. This is how famous impressionist artist, Pierre-Auguste Renior, painted eyes in his portraits. Simple and soft, but very realistic looking. We finished up our portraits with a lip color and added other details to make our portraits special and uniquely ours.

I hope to see everyone at the art show later this month in Panther Hall Gallery! You can also log onto Artsonia, an online museum that Ranney School participates in and see all of our 3rd grade artwork there.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839