February 21st, 2023

2/21/2023

Portraiture in Tucker Room

A recent focus on facial features, like eyes and mouths, connected to preparations for St. John's birthday celebration next week, inspired us to take a closer look at our faces. With the use of mirrors, the children created self-portraits using markers and water color. In the process we noticed the children's strong attention to detail and impressive observation skills (e.g. the difference in length of their lower and upper eyelashes, position of eyelids or the length and orientation of eyebrow hairs).

The mirror helped me looking at my face. It was hard trying to make it perfect. We made them to show grown-ups the hard work we've done. I like my bow the best because I always wear a big bow. - Remy

I just maked my face and I just add eye and hair and then my chest. You just draw a circle and put a dot in. That's how you make an eye. Eyes are usually round shaped like a circle. And there's a dot on your eye. The color of your eyes. That's the color dot in your eye. And there's a white thing under it . That's usually an eye. I remember making my portrait. Like my face or maybe half a body, or maybe a face, a neck or a chest connected. - Michael

Taking a closer look at our eyes...

It's a sideways oval. There's a little dot in your eye. My eyes are blue. - Cape
And kind of green. - Michael
Yeah greenish blue. - Cape
There's some black in the middle. I saw Capers eyes. - Michael
There's eyebrows. They can close and open (eye lashes). Some lines. - Cape

Eyes are actually not just green. They have all different colors. There's like dots in your eyes that are other colors. Probably that's what makes you see, those dots in your eye. They could be like sensors. But if you wanna know, you should ask a scientist. There's skin and eyebrows. There's also veins in your eyes. Because everything in your body needs blood vessels. In the deep sea you don't really need eyes because there's nothing to see. That's because shrimp in the deep see they see heat. They eat bacteria of the hot smokers. When water goes down to the earth it goes into the hot lava and burst out in hot smoke. - Hugh

We are proudly presenting the children's finished self-portraits! We invite you to also check out their colorful portraits in the studio window :)

a focus on scale

We can make mini figures so we can go in it! - Finlay, wondering how we can best engage with the rooms we created for our Connected House Project

You can take pictures of us and cut them out. - Hugh

This sparked the idea of exploring and using a new material, Shrinky Dink paper, in order to create "minifigures" of ourselves.

We got take the picture of us and then we cut it out and then we printed it and then it came perfect. We did it (the poses chosen by the children) different because we are different. We got the Shrinky Dink paper, we got the sharpie, the markers and then we traced the papers. We were on the paper and then we put them in the oven to get small. Because it was getting hot and it moved around. It got smaller, they shrink. Shrinky Dink. We made them because we wanted to put someone on our dream house. Us.
- Frannie

The children were very intentional about their body position, poses and possibly props they added, considering what their "minifigure" might need in the Connected House.

I wanna make a flying one like Cate. How did she do it? - Cape
I drawed the cape. - Cate
But the pose, how did you do the pose? - Cape
I'm lying down. - Cate
I want it to look like I'm flying upside down and Sweetie can sit on my belly. (flipping his printed out pose upside down) - Cape
You need to outline it so it attaches. You trace around your body. - Cate

I added a cape, a helmet. These are gloves to fly in the flying room. So if I fall I won't get hurt because I have a helmet and gloves. - Lucas
Wow! Lucas looks like a super hero. - Wilder

...and one of the most exciting parts was when they finally come out of the oven!

Going from small "minifigures" for our Connected House to large scale projections and tracings of the children's self-portraits provided another wonderful opportunity to explore scale and proportions.

What color is my skin?

When choosing colors for their skin color from a variety of markers and watercolors, the children displayed a great intentionality.

Golden because it's the same as my skin color. - Frannie