self-portrait rubbing

Materials:

• pen or pencil

• crayons

• paper

• glue

• scissors

• upcycled thin cardboard - cereal box, other dry good boxes

• tin foil (optional)

Step 1:

Collect your materials. You will need roughly 2 pieces of thin cardboard (one box).

Step 2: 

If you need to, cut your box open so that it is flat and you can use all the sides.

Step 3:

Draw out the different shapes you will need to create your self-portrait. Think about a large shape for your head and smaller shapes for your features - eyes, nose, ears, mouth, and hair. Also think about glasses, moles. freckles, eyebrows, and jewelry. No drawn details will matter, just the shape that you cut out.

Step 4: 

Cut out your face shape and facial features. You may have to try a few times to get shapes that are the size you want.

Step 5:

Arrange all your facial features. Keep adding and editing, moving parts around until you have an arrangement that you love. Then glue everything together. I used elmers liquid glue but a glue stick would work too.

Step 7:

As you color your self-portrait will appear. Continue coloring until you have covered your paper.

Once you are done doing rubbings you can turn your self-portrait into a relief sculpture. Glue your collage to a base and grab some tin foil.

Then flip your artwork back to the front and rub. Your collaged facial features and head shape will appear. You can also add another layer of color with many different coloring tools. I would suggest sharpie or crayon.

Step 6:

Get a piece of paper (any color) and a crayon (any color, make sure it is a color that will show well on your paper) and place your paper on top of your collaged self-portrait. Take your crayon and begin pressing down and coloring.

Step 8:

You can continue to create as many rubbings as you like using different color paper and crayons!

Wrap your collage in tin foil. I placed some glue dots on the front of the collage to secure the tin foil and then folded it around each edge.