Planning the project with the students
We started out by brainstroming with the students how they saw
themselves. We wanted them to see themselves in particular setting,
doing something they liked.
When they decided on the setting they would create, we proceeded to
take pictures of each other with something from that setting.
Capturing a still photo that they will use for a model
We used a video camera connected to a Macintosh LCII that was
equipted with a videodigitizing board. That allows us to capture
pictures from the video camera live. The board was a VideoSpigot Card
made by SuperMac with accompaning software called ScreenPlay.
Students brought in any props they might need to capture various
still shots via the video camera. Each student was able select the
shot they wished to keep as a model for their self-portrait.
We enlarged the original shot so that it would be easier to see.
Students printed out copies for themselves.
Getting our designs on paper
The use of technology allowed easier transfer of their facial
proportions to the piece of paper where their final art project would
reside.
From the photo and an opaque projector, we were able to transfer the
basic shape of the head and the position of the eyes, nose and mouth.
Rosana gets them into the artistic mood and sets the stage!
Rosana spent some time showing them her self-portrait and self
portraits done by other artist.
They talked about expressing your feelings about yourself in your
portrait.
She also gave them time to experiment with the media, oil pastels,
and gave them lessons on different ways to create desired effects.
Needless to say, they always returned with messy hands and big smiles
on their faces!
Digitizing our art work
After the art work was done, we used an Apple Color OneScanner and Ofoto software to scan each child's work.
The original scanned images were huge, approx. 1,400 K, so we used
Graphic Converter to convert them into "JPEG" format. This reduced the
file size of the images by approximately 20 fold.
After scanning we cropped and scaled them to fit conviently on the
web site. The final image files were only 20K - 50K in size, reducing the
time to load them, and yet were large enough on the Web page to
show off the students' work well.
Additional information on web page
Students were asked to write a short paragraph telling something
about themselves and thier portrait. They used the Writing Center as
their word processing program.
They were asked to record a short sound bite using SoundMachine to
digitize their sound.
The photo at the bottom of the page is the photo the student chose as
their pose for their self-portrait.
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