That’s Me!

Creating self-portraits is a key part of our art curriculum at Mustard Seed School. Each year students return to the theme showing their growth in artistic skills and knowledge of themselves.

Why?

Creating a self-portrait reflects many of our core commitments as a school. It requires you to:

Look closely at yourself, 

Consider what makes you special, 

Think about how God created us all to be different,

View ourselves as beloved children of God.

How?

We begin by inviting the children to use a mirror to carefully observe their faces, then to draw, or paint, what they see.

In drawing, students use a black flair pen. Mistakes cannot be erased and the process of creating more than one draft is introduced.

Children studied their faces and hands to decide which shade of paint to use for their self-portrait.

In paint, the self-portrait is a multiday process. Stamina for a multi-step process is something that challenges most young children. Often they know and understand more than they can actually do. They get tired before they can finish. Muscles get tired from using them in new ways and the mind gets tired from remembering steps and processes. Working on one piece over the course of many days helps everyone build confidence and work carefully.

As three-year-olds work on the skill of drawing circles, four and five-year-olds add more representational details to their self-portraits. Everyone has two beautiful self-portraits reflecting their personality.