The assignment every one of my scholars dreads (I would have too, if I had to do a self-portrait in 8th grade), and yet the one they usually end up most proud of. This is one of the rare assignments where I allow my students to trace (if desired), but depending on your philosophy or skill level, you do not have to follow this.
Below is the teacher example I made, featuring my late hamster, Gogurt (yes, I brought her to work with me a few times). This project combines the previous two in this unit (Comic Strip and Celebrity Half-Portrait), and is meant to help students see that there are many ways the human body can tell a story.
I tell my students at least a weekend in advance that they will need to send me a selfie/photograph of themselves showing their head/bust area. It mortifies them. Even more so when I tell them that if they do not send me their photo in time, I will take a photo of them the day of the project in their uniform. Regardless of my reminders, there's always plenty of them who end up lining up at the front of the room to have their photo taken by me outside the door. Some of them work with it and make goofy faces and others just stare blankly.
Once you have their photos, you print them out to about the size their format will be (ours are 7x10in). Don't forget to crop out space so that the majority of their photo is their head and neck area. Shoulders/bust optional depending on if the student wants to include their outfit.
Then, students can either use tracing paper, the lighttables (or the window on a sunny day), or the "carbon copy" method (rub graphite on the back of the item being traced, place on blank sheet of paper, use sharp object to trace over the lines, and the graphite on the back will transfer to the blank sheet) in order to trace their likeness onto their format. You can see above where I used a pencil to transfer mine using the "carbon copy" method.
A surprising amount of them...do not know how to trace. I can't explain it. Maybe something about fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination? These are the students who you will need to make sure their photo print is especially cropped/zoomed in, so they don't sweat the little details.
Depending, again, on the level of your own students, you might want them to not trace at all, and instead free hand it. No issue.
Once their likeness is on the format, have them trace over it with a black sharpie or marker. They're free to use multiple thicknesses if they wish, but I encourage the less experienced students to stick with one thickness (the thin lines don't look very well, so try to stay away from fine-liners and micron pens). Have them erase all their pencil lines after. Don't let them forget to include a speech/thought bubble! The instructions the last art teacher wrote was to have it be something interesting, memorable, or a catchphrase! A lot of students who don't know what to write will end up writing something random or seemingly boring, just let them. It's not worth the struggle.
If there's an event or related topic happening around the same time as the assignment, you could have them write something down in relation to that (ex: a Catholic Art class could have the speech bubbles quoting their favorite Bible verses, the project done around New Years could have speech bubbles wishing people a happy new year, multi-language schools could have them say something in the language they're learning, etc.)
After they've erased the pencil, they need MARKERS and a ruler (especially for the ones with shaky/unsteady hands). They will use the ruler to evenly space out large dots across their hair, face, body, etc. Make sure there's EXAGGERATION in the sizes.
Encourage students to use unusual/unnatural colors for their skin tone! I find that if a student wants to try to match their skin exactly, they have a lot of issues (particularly if your color collection of markers isn't much to write home about).
As you can see from the examples, there are some areas of the drawing
where it is filled in with solid color: make sure they keep these spaces
to a minimum: only for emphasis or contrast. Places like hair,
eyebrows, lips, and eyes are a good place for solid coloring.
Students also have the option to (after dotting with the marker), LIGHTLY filling in the white space with colored pencils, as an embellishment. Make sure the strokes are going in one direction.
I require my students to do a simple background, something that doesn't take attention away from their self-portrait. Like a solid color, stripes, polka-dots, etc.
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