Costume Portraits

The costume adds an additional component to portrait drawing and could be fun both at home or in a school setting drawing each other in a partnership or setting it up as a centre.

Materials

Easel (ours came with a clip for the paper, but you could use binder clips or clothes pins)
Paper (we used watercolour)
Pencil/ eraser (we recommend a white one)
Fine black pen
Paint (we used liquid watercolours, tempera pucks & glitter paint. The kids already had the lion in mind, but put out an array to choose from)
Painter’s tape
Salt
Paint tray
Paint brushes

We always find these items helpful too:

Smock
Craft tray

Directions

* Our children enjoy drawing on the easel, but find it frustrating to paint on, so we painted on a flat surface. However, if your child(ren) or students like painting on the easel, simply just use a thicker type of paint than the ones suggested to prevent drips.*

Have your model dress up in their chosen costume. You could do this activity for Halloween or any day using costumes from the dress up area of your classroom/ playroom. If you think sitting or standing might be hard for your model, you could also take a photo and draw from there.

Sketch out your costumed friend. Our daughter drew our youngest son as the lion, whereas our older son drew his siblings as people within the costumes.

Don your smock. Paint your portrait. (You could use whichever medium you like instead- pencil crayons, pastels, markers etc.) Here’s a few little tips that might prevent frustration for the painter. When there were two colours that were close together (in our case the yellow of the lion’s fur and the blue of the eyes), we painted the yellow and then waited for it to dry to then paint the blue. (This prevented green.) We went around the exterior of the eye with the blue forming an oval and then filling in with the colour so that then it holds the colour in, preventing bleeding. Waiting overnight for a thoroughly dry page to paint the background also prevents bleeding if this is something that your painter wants to avoid. Our daughter wanted to add some ” Halloween magic” to the portrait so we added glitter paint to the yellow watercolour and created a special effect with the background. So on to the background…

We taped the edges off of our portrait with painter’s tape (with it half on the paper and half off) to form a simple border. While our watercolour paint was wet, we sprinkled on some salt for a starburst effect. While damp, carefully pull off your tape (you don’t want to let it adhere as it may cause rips).