Micrography Portrait

Materials:
- Student Photographs
- Pencil
- Eraser
- Fine Point Sharpie
- Extra Fine Point Sharpie
- White Drawing Paper

I LOVE doing portrait projects with my students and I always do an identity project to begin their art term. I thought this would be a great way to combine the two.

I teach my students about micrography and how it differs from typography. I took photos of all my students and printed them out for their guides. I also gave them a worksheet where they needed to list 40 POSITIVE characteristics about themselves.

1. Trace all major outlines of the face. Include neck, shoulders, eye brows, hair lines. I avoid doing individual teeth and emphasize do not draw a triangle around the nose. My students always want to draw a whole shape for their nose because they mentally know there is a nose there, but I have to point out that we don't see a shape around our nose like our eyes or mouth. I demonstrate how to do the nostrils and bridge.

I did mine on tracing paper as an example for my students to see what I'm looking for. It's hard to see pencil marks on a black and white image from far away. Tracing paper is not needed for this lesson, but you can definitely add it as an extra step.

If you did do this on tracing paper, you would now have to transfer the contour drawing onto a "good piece of paper." If not, I approve the outline, and then students can sharpie the outline right onto the print out.

2. NOW we trace the contour line onto a "good piece of paper" either using a light box or a window. The students should have a pencil contour line drawing on their final paper similar to what is seen above.

3. Fill in with words! The actual lines (ex. neck, chin) are just written on with words. Students will start to notice the smaller the letters and the less space between, the more "filled in" the image appears (just like pointilism, eh?). This part is all done with pencil.

5. Next step is to extra fine point sharpie over the words.

6. Erase any visible pencil marks.

Some images I use as examples:

All are from: http://gawno.com/2009/05/micrography-text-art-and-typography/.

* You might also like Micrography Thumbprints.

** On a side note, does anyone know how to easily place pictures side by side? I'd rather post that way than have to keep scrolling...