Mosaic Portraits

This project was morphed from a lesson found on Incredible Art Department.  The students started by using their 'artist's eyes' to try and duplicate simple lines onto the same size sheet of paper.  From there they worked on duplicating lines to scale on a larger piece of paper.  Then they practiced using basic pen and ink techniques for obtaining different values by making value scales using hatching, crosshatching, stippling, and patterns.  They found a picture of someone they admired and we worked on compiling all the skills we had practiced into a final mosaic portrait.  This project was filled with objectives as the students had to demonstrate the ability to show different values using marker as well as recreating an image at a larger scale.  The students were astonished by how close the final portraits looked like their chosen photographs.  This was a definite confidence booster!  These examples were done by seventh and eighth graders.