Best of Portraits

I've featured some great portraits on here before so this time, I want to look at portraits that were successful for other reasons.

Class critiques have not always gone well for me. Students don't want to share their work, they don't want to talk about another student's work, sometimes they can't explain why they like or don't like something; I've come to dread critiques to the point of avoiding them. After watching a teacher at another school do a class critique with his middle school students, I was inspired to try again. This time, I put up EVERYONE's artwork on the board (the artwork was not quite finished, it was due that day) and had students choose a work that they liked because something in it worked really well- I explained that the entire picture might not be good, but the texture of the hair, or shading on the eyes, might be excellent and worthy of praise. After stating what worked well, we chose something that needed attention or needed to be fixed during the class period. I also included a drawing I did so that they could choose my artwork to comment on if they were shy to talk about another students' work.

It was miraculous, after the first few comments, students began opening up and discussing each other's work (and often times they picked their own to critique) and giving great advice on what to work on and applying successful techniques in their own work.

The two artworks below are two that completely transformed after the critique. While they do not look exactly like the celebrity they were trying to draw, they are great efforts. Tupac is shaded in such a unique smokey way (he added the background shading after the critique), and Rihanna has such careful highlights and shadows using erasers and smudging. Great efforts. I also included my work in process that they critiqued of Keyshia Cole.