Cyborg Self Portrait- 6th grade

Drawing a self portrait can be one of the most important art works a middle school student can accomplish. Their parents expect it, you want to teach them about correct proportion, and most of all- they ask for it! I try to do a different self portrait for every grade. This past year for 6th grade we did "Cyborg Self Portraits." This project was one of my absolute favorites. By adding a Si-fi element to the project, students were more comfortable taking risk. What I loved was the huge success rate I had. not only were kids learning how to draw a face correctly, they were learning how to make dynamic, intricate, and detailed art.

 I found it helpful to use The Virtual Instructor. 


We practiced drawing eyes, lips and noses for about a week (I only see them every-other day).  I have found that when teaching proportion, I find more success when teaching it kinesthetic way. For example, I will have students take their index finger and their thumb and measure the width of their eye and apply that measurement to the space between their eye. "What do you notice?" I say, and they all shout, "It's the same size!!!"

For this project I pulled up a few examplars. We watched a very cool video by Honda about their robot development. It lead to a great discussion about the future role of artificial intelligence. We discussed what the "uncanny valley" was and they had to decide how closely they wanted their portrait to resemble a human.


 I could not think of a well known artist that drew cyborg portraits so Googled "Cyborg portrait", "cyborg self", "robot portrait" and "robot self" and came up with a ton of good examples. 


Here are some examples of how the project turned out. We used pencil on 8 1/2 X 11 drawing paper. This project, with pre-practice, took about 3 1/2 weeks.