It's been a tough year for all, but I believe it is still important to teach students to give back to the community through their artistic talents. The JC Junior Arts students at Academy 1 have been participating in the Memory Project for three years now. This year, the students and I had the opportunity to draw and create portraits of children from the country of Cameroon. The Memory Project is a charitable nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create and donate portraits to youth around the world who have faced substantial challenges such as violence, disasters, extreme poverty, neglect, and loss of parents.
As part of our curriculum, students are taught to draw a self-portrait with proper proportions. I thought it was a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone and teach students about global awareness by participating in the Memory Project. This year, due to the pandemic the requested contribution fee was waived and we didn't have to worry about planning fundraising activities.
The students were taught how to use the grid method of drawing to replicate the photograph of their assigned child. We used clear acetate to create a 1"x 1" grid to put on top of the colored photographs of the children. Then, on our 9" x 12" paper we also made a fairly light grid using a pencil. I also taught students how to make a viewfinder to concentrate on drawing one box at a time to keep our portraits looking as accurate to our child as possible. Once we finished drawing our children, we put them aside to learn how to properly mix skin tone colors using the primary colors plus black and white. It was a bit of a challenge making sure each student had the necessary supplies to complete their portrait, but we made it work! OUR ART WORK
Lastly, I had students choose an artwork as inspiration for their background of their Memory Project portrait. On the back of the portraits we were asked to include a respectable photo of ourselves, the artists, since we learned the kids would really love to see who made their portraits. We also traced our hand on the back for the children to be able to express gratitude for being able to create portraits for them. After collecting all the finished portraits from the students, I was ready to mail it back to Ben Shumaker, the founder and director so that the portraits could be hand delivered to the children in Cameroon.
For more information and how to participate in this wonderful project visit- http://memoryproject.org/ and or email: [email protected]