I wanted to work with photos and wondered how to make it interesting. I asked Isabel to take three photos of each person. An action shot, a silly face and a portrait. I thought silly faces would be something she’d love (well, don’t all 10-year olds?) but looking at my beautiful grandchildren made me doubt this project’s success!
I’m not going to show you the hideous faces and I even added sunglasses to Izzy’s crossed eyes. But I’ll explain my concept and the steps Izzy did. I borrowed Harriet’s sunglasses to spare you!
I think they look better small! We cropped the photos then decided what they needed to have added . I printed them out and Isabel put tracing paper over the photos and drew whiskers, a nose and earrings for herself, and a crown, sunglasses and lips for her sister. She was careful to fully enclose shapes or they ‘leak’ when you use the Magic wand to colour them. The sunglasses are jagged at the bottom so that they don’t go over her sister’s fingers.
The background was made transparent and Isabel added the shapes to their faces and ‘painted’ them. Then we printed them out at matchbox size and popped them into a matchbox to make a “box of silly faces”
The new tools that I introduced today was the clone tool (to improve the background by getting rid of a rope) and the crop tool – to select the area of the photo and make it a specific size. Each photo had the contrast and brightness changed. She hadn’t used the paintbrush before and had fun with that as you can see by the green freckles. She chose all the colours herself.
Lesson 6. Then there were three…
In lesson 6, we gave Daddy a make-over.
Instead of tracing and scanning the glasses and beard, Izzy drew them with a mouse using the lasso tool. We scanned her brother’s portrait to borrow his auburn hair and gave daddy a luxurious beard. Using the lasso, Izzy outlined glasses and went over the edges with a paintbrush and black ‘ink’.
We wanted a wild moustache so looked at Salvador Dali portraits for inspiration and she drew this directly with the paintbrush.
b.t.w. Isabel thought she looked better with crossed eyes than with the green sunglasses and told me to go back in ‘history’, as one does in Photoshop. I decided to have the final say.
My family? I don’t think so!
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