This document provides an overview for a 3-4 week art unit on identity and self-portraits for students. Students will explore self-portraits by Australian artists Margaret Olley and Kieran Hall, comparing subject matter, techniques, and symbols used. They will create a mixed media self-portrait using printing, painting, drawing, and collage, incorporating personal objects. Students will design a composition with two large background areas that overlap, and make line drawings of objects to collage along with a small painted self-portrait.
This document provides an overview for a 3-4 week art unit on identity and self-portraits for students. Students will explore self-portraits by Australian artists Margaret Olley and Kieran Hall, comparing subject matter, techniques, and symbols used. They will create a mixed media self-portrait using printing, painting, drawing, and collage, incorporating personal objects. Students will design a composition with two large background areas that overlap, and make line drawings of objects to collage along with a small painted self-portrait.
This document provides an overview for a 3-4 week art unit on identity and self-portraits for students. Students will explore self-portraits by Australian artists Margaret Olley and Kieran Hall, comparing subject matter, techniques, and symbols used. They will create a mixed media self-portrait using printing, painting, drawing, and collage, incorporating personal objects. Students will design a composition with two large background areas that overlap, and make line drawings of objects to collage along with a small painted self-portrait.
This document provides an overview for a 3-4 week art unit on identity and self-portraits for students. Students will explore self-portraits by Australian artists Margaret Olley and Kieran Hall, comparing subject matter, techniques, and symbols used. They will create a mixed media self-portrait using printing, painting, drawing, and collage, incorporating personal objects. Students will design a composition with two large background areas that overlap, and make line drawings of objects to collage along with a small painted self-portrait.
Image resources Enter Art Portrait in the mirror, Margaret Olley, image no.13 Beyond the frame Self Portrait, Kieran Hall, image no.13
Outcomes and Indicators
Making
Appreciating
VAS 3.1 Investigates subject matter in an attempt to
represent likenesses of things in the world. explores the convention of self-portraiture as a means of showing identity.
VAS 3.3 Acknowledges that audiences respond in
different ways to artworks and that there are different opinions about the value of artworks. talks about the meaning of artworks recognising how self-portraits can be interpreted in different ways.
VAS 3.2 Makes artworks for different audiences
assembling materials in a variety of ways. experiments with layering in printing and collage.
VAS 3.4 Communicates about the ways in which
subject matter is represented in artworks. discusses the artists intentions in regard to his or her representation of self.
Unit overview: Students explore their own identity in an artwork. They seek inspiration in self-portraits by Australian painters who include symbols of their identity. Students combine drawing, painting, collage and printing in a mixed media artwork, discovering how artworks can be built up through layering images.
and Self Portrait by Kieran Hall. Identify similarities and differences in subject matter, composition, media and techniques. In these self-portraits, both artists have placed themselves with objects that are significant to them. Identify these objects in the artworks. What do they tell us about each artists life and interests? What has each artist done that is unusual or imaginative in these self-portraits? What types of colours has each artist used?
Teaching notes
Image resources Enter Art Portrait in the mirror, Margaret Olley, image no.13 Beyond the frame Self Portrait, Kieran Hall, image no.13
Consider warm, cool, bright and primary colours.
How have the artists created likeness or reality?
In discussing likeness, students consider tone,
size, solidness, roundness, modelling, scale, proportion and detail.
How has each artist arranged objects and used
space? Which portrait do you prefer and why?
Discuss grouping or spreading of objects, open
space and focal points.
Making self-portrait drawings
At home, look in a mirror to study facial features and draw a self-portrait in pencil. Learning experience 2 Making mixed media artworks about self Create a mixed media composition about self incorporating printing, painting, drawing and collage.
Image resource Beyond the frame Self Portrait, Kieran Hall, image no.13 Other resources screen for printing screen printing inks or paint squeegee litho paper newspaper scissors.
Collect small personal objects that reveal
something about school life, culture or lifestyle such as a report card, sports ribbons or medallions. These objects can be photocopied.
crayons acrylic paint or Edicol dyes brushes glue small personal objects. Colour the photocopies of objects with diluted paint or Edicol dyes.
Making screen prints: background and
shapes Refer to Halls painting. Design a composition that employs space in a similar way. Create two large horizontal areas of colour which provide the background for the composition. Where these areas meet, have them overlap by 2-4 cms. The overlap area will provide a table or bench surface on which to place objects.
Sketch an outline of the structure of the works
on the board indicating the two large areas of colour to be printed and include the overlap area.
Area of overlap
Cut separate stencils for each large colour area.
Print the areas of colour employing overlapping. Allow the work to dry between printing each colour. Making drawings Make line drawings of personal objects (these may be sketches or continuous line drawings) as seen from the side from eye level. Making self-portrait paintings Make a small painting from the drawn selfportrait. Cut out a shaped frame from coloured paper squares. Making collages about self Position the painted portrait, drawings, and drawings, or photocopies of drawings of personal objects on the printed background. Try various arrangements before fixing the images to the artwork. Appreciating: reflecting Write an account of the screen-printing process (procedure).
Demonstrate cutting the stencils (allow for
overlap) and using the squeegee to print.
The drawings might be in pencil, crayon or felt
pen.
If larger self-portraits are painted, these can be
photocopied and reduced, then coloured with diluted paint.
