This project is perfect for third and forth graders, who love to do a little something spooky and creepy. Information below the examples.

This project starts way before Halloween because it takes forever. We look at Tim Burton’s art and I have the students point out different similarities they notice between the characters. We talk about how these features, big eyes, small noses and mouths, very skinny necks and greyscale nature, are part of Burton’s style. We talk about how we are making Burton style self portraits and how to do that we have to do a few things in his style. Mainly the big eyes and lack of color. I demonstrate where and how big their portraits should be on the paper, which is important because otherwise they make them teeny tiny.

They use pencil first, which is hard on the grey paper but they figure it out, then they use sharpie over that. They use an ebony pencil for dark values and shadows and a white charcoal pencil to add in the light values.

Then we do the frame, which I have to figure out a better way of doing because they did not understand me and everyone was confused. But they end up with a frame that they add a few designs to and then we are done! They really enjoy making themselves and for my forth graders who did this project the year before, I let them make up a character or do their friends, which they went even crazier with.