Self-Potrait
How Do You See Yourself
Art Class
I thought that I was a pretty good story teller and writer. However, I was not an illustrator. I wanted the pictures of my stories to bring the story to life. I wanted to not only write my stories, I wanted to illustrate them too. You see, I thought that only I could create the pictures that I was seeing in my head. So, I decided to take an art class for illustrations.
My name is Rochelle
It was my first day of art class. We all had to introduce ourselves but the teacher wanted us to only say our names. As I looked around the class, I noticed that there were a variety of art supplies laying on several large table around the classroom. On these tables, there were rocks, sand, ribbons, yarn, an assortment of paper, beads and all sort of things you would find in and craft store. After we all introduced ourselves, the teachers explained why she had the variety of art supplies in the class.
Materials
She went on to explain that she wanted us to create a self-portrait out of these materials and after we have created this representation of ourselves, we had to stand up in front of the class and share why we chose those particular art materials to represent us and we had thirty minutes to complete this project.
Where do I begin?
I did not know where to begin. I looked at items on the table. I thought, “Nothing on these tables seem to fit what I wanted to create of myself.” As I looked at the other students, there were chatting and selecting materials. Some had already begin to create. As I watched in terra because I had no ideas what to do or where to start I chose items that I was familiar with.
Self Potrait
Some self-portraits were really great. The majority of the students in the class were already good at drawing. I found myself using the whole thirty minutes to create a portrait of myself. Most of the students created their face and some their whole body. However, there was this one African American girl who did none of that. I will never forget her self-portrait. She took colored sand and made a rainbow at the top of her paper. Underneath the rainbow were very tiny black pebbles falling as though they were raindrops. The raindrops fell on a bed of pink hearts made out of yarn. She shared that the rainbow was the happiness in her life, the black rocks were the trials that she was going through that fell from the rainbow and the hearts were on the bottom because as long as she had heart, she could weather any storm. The class fell silent. No clapping, no comments, no questions. Just a "thank you for sharing from the teacher."