Hanlon-Deerfield Art Blog: 5th Grade Students Ponder The Question "What would I look like in 100 years?"

Students begin to create small clay self-portraits imagining what they would look like in 100 years. My goal was for students to go beyond the cliche of simply creating a wrinkled face and dig a little bit deeper into facial expressions. Students were asked "How do you think it feels to be old?" and "How can an artist portray that feeling visually?" I think they did an amazing job so far! More pictures to come as the process continues!

Before beginning our discussion students analyzed 2 pictures (the one above by artist Andreas Englund and the one below of various clay faces). A super hero is a great subject for this discussion because it was something that all the students could relate to while at the same time being puzzled and intrigued by the idea of an aging hero. We primarily focused on his face with our guiding question being "How can you tell what he is feeling by looking at his face?" Students responded in various ways: "He looks frustrated, like he can't do the things he once cool like peel an orange" "He looks bitter but that may just be the orange" "His eyes are slightly closed and he looks really tired"...

Face-painting

Once the clay has dried its time to really bring these faces to life. I find that tempera cakes work well on air dry clay as long as students mix them well enough. Today students mixed a skin tone thinking about how their skin would look in 100 years (darker if they spend a lot of time in the sun, lighter if they think they will avoid the sun) Below are some examples of the beginning stage of painting so far.

After the faces were painted we begin to think about what these future versions of themselves would wear? While creating these paper plans students used the heads to give them an idea about what the clothing would look like. Students came up with three different designs for their people to wear.