Spray Paint Self Portraits

 In Intro to Art (7th and 8th grades) we are working on a unit on street art.  Our first lesson was "Graffiti Names".  Students learned graffiti lettering and shading techniques.  In this current lesson, students are creating self portraits using spraypaint stencil techniques.
First, we looked at the work of Shepard Fairey.  We also watched an interview with him on YouTube.  I took a picture of each student, they drew on the printed photograph to break the portrait into shapes to make a stencil.  They drew the simplified portrait onto an 18x24" sheet of manila tag.  Students used grid techniques to transfer their drawings to the larger paper.
Students cut out the shapes using X-Acto knives.  We created backgrounds inspired by the backgrounds in Fairey's work.  Students used various printed papers, stamps, brayers with printing inks, and printed bubble wrap (and assorted textures) to create their backgrounds.
Finally, we went outside to spraypaint some "test" prints.  Now that the kinks have been worked out, students will reuse their stencils to create paintings on their backgrounds.