'Silhouettes'

My first graders just finished creating their "Cityline Silhouettes" and I wanted to follow up this lesson by teaching a one day lesson about the traditional folk art known as 'Silhouettes'. I created a short Power Point that showed several images of traditional silhouettes (side view images of a girl's head, the side view of a man's head, etc.) We talked about how this form of art was more popular prior to the invention of the camera because it was widely used as a form of portraiture. Now artists create silhouettes as a form of folk art, and many artists have updated this artform to include non traditional colors and subject matter. After the slide show, my students created these great silhouettes by tracing some pre made tracers that I made (gathered from images at this website) and then they chose background paper from a selection of great animal print paper that I have (you can get this paper through supply stores like Dick Blick and Sax). They mounted all of this on construction paper, and then once again on a black background for a very finished look. All in one period!