Portrait of Me

Description of My Portrait

by Melanie

Portrait of Me

recreated by Tessa

To start my picture, hold your 17" x 11" paper vertically. My picture is in profile facing toward the left. My head is about 1 and 1/2 hands long and 1 hand wide, not including my hair, but including my neck. The width of my hair is about three fingers. The length is two hands. The top goes about halfway on top of my head. My nose is about half a finger wide and a half a finger long. There is not a line between my nose and the rest of my head. My eye is a little more than halfway up my head. It is half a finger long, and a quarter of a finger wide. It is in the shape of an almond. My ear starts one half a finger away from my eye. My mouth is about 3/4 of a finger away from the bottom of my nose. My lips are closed. Next to my mouth, about a finger nail away, I have a cheek mark that curves to the left and is about a finger nail thick. I have a line separating my head and my neck, which is about a finger long. The line does not go all the way to the line separating my head from my hair. You have now almost completed my face. You still have the colors.

You will need magenta, yellow, orange, and of course black. First outline my face in black paint. For my pupil use the black paint you are using to outline my face with. For my skin use some yellow and orange, almost like the color of the sun with just a little more orange in it. The color of my hair has yellow and orange. Make sure it is a darker color than my face. The last color in my face is magenta. Just color my lips that one color. Now for the crown. The crown is on top of my head and has four points on the top. The zig zag point on the front side goes about one half finger long. There are three more points, but the last one goes off the page. The points in the middle are about one half a finger long going up and down. The length of the crown in the front is about two fingers long. It is magenta and orange with four green dots going across.

Now for the top of my torso. The sides go diagonally. The left side slant about two fingers long, but the right side slant (which is going off the page) is about one finger long. My arms are 3/4 of a finger wide and about one half a finger long, going off the bottom of the paper. The shirt is a mixture of magenta and purple, but has a lot more purple.

Now for the background. There is one pine tree which has a black trunk, and is about four fingers high and starts about 1 and 1/2 finger up from the bottom of the page. It is from one to one half a finger wide. It gets more skinny going up. On the two sides of the tree trunk there are pine leaves which are green. The leaves are about half a finger wide and four fingers long. The leaves are on a diagonal facing downward. The rest of the portrait is a mixture of light and dark blue, but there is more dark blue in the mixture. You now have completed my portrait.

There were a few things that didn't work well. I should have said my hair was not in the shape of a box and was longer. Tessa colored my lips red instead of magenta. My shirt looks more red than purple; she also didn't do my cheek mark. My eye was supposed to be black instead of blue, and she made it too high. I told her it was black. But I was not so clear where to put it. I know I described my cheek mark pretty clearly, but she maybe didn't know what one was. She also didn't put the pine tree in. I think she didn't put it in because she didn't have enough room. She got the color of the background right, though.

I enjoyed this project a lot because I got to test the way I made my descriptions.