Friday Fancies XVI

Back to Artistic Pursuits — today’s lesson:  Portraits.

To simplify, I had the children focus on faces only.  I sketched a face on paper as we talked, discussing eye and nose shapes and how the eyes are always much lower on the face that we initially think they are.

I assigned each boy a face on a book cover to replicate.

Sidney’s Benjamin Franklin portrait. . . . . . .

Lincoln’s boy from the cover of The Matchlock Gun

Rachel’s eyes caught the book cover of Anne of Green Gables, and she begged that we draw it.  I stationed myself between the girls.  We studied Anne’s eyes and drew them in slowly, first the upper curve, then the lower curve, the girls carefully tracing over my lines, step-by-step.

Every time I do a drawing with the girls this way, I have misgivings that I am encouraging artistic dependence on me.  And each time, it seems to unleash a flurry of artistic initiative in the days following, so that they attempt more difficult pictures on the their own.

Rachel loved the fact that Anne had red hair . . . .”She has red hair like me, Mama.”

Apparently, Rachel prefers her art to be realistic, while Prairie . . . . .

sees the world through a different lense.