Self Portrait Canvases

Let me tell you all about these!  Here we go…

First, I got the HUGE canvases at Michael’s – they are 2 ft by 3 ft!  You might have seen them teetering on my cart if you follow me on Instagram (I’m SugarBeeCrafts – find on there!) –

I HIGHLY recommend the mobile app for Michael’s if you don’t already have it – for those of you with a smartphone, it means that you can have their coupons with you anytime you have your phone with you – wahoo!!  I’d use a coupon on the canvases, because they can be a little pricey.  BUT – if you want to do this project now, the canvases are 40% on sale, so stock up.  I grabbed other supplies while there and did several other projects, some shown HERE.

I prepped the kids and told them we were doing self portraits.  I talked about using the whole canvas and how they’d need to show their whole body – head to the feet.  Then I had them use a pencil to draw out an idea:

Then they worked on painting to color in their drawing.  This needs to be done in several steps because you don’t want to mix paint colors unintentionally.  So they painted main colors, then let that dry, then went back in with details.  Plus it gives them a break.

It never comes out quite as I picture (that’s the hard part of letting kids create wall art) but it’s still awesome that they made it all themselves.  My 4 year old wanted his pants and shirt to match – resulting in a jumpsuit?! – and he insisted on a background of sky and sun (and airplane).  I was aiming for minimalistic, but if he’s feeling the creative vibe, I guess we just go with it.

My basement is pretty boring so I love how these “fun” up the space!

All lined up proudly:

I’ve always been a fan of letting your kids create wall art, a Home Art Gallery (a past post about Home Art Galleries) – – this year we started with fresh canvases and attempted portraits for the first time.  In the past we have just painted over our canvases from the year before, and I have them go more “abstract”.
Here’s some views of galleries in the past: