These easy animal portraits are sure to be a hit with your students. It works perfectly if you are wanting to do an animal-themed unit study and allow students to choose their favorite animal. They are also great for teaching about different art-related techniques.

Easy Animal Portraits

What you need for this project.

For this lesson, we used images of animals that had been printed on copy paper. The supplies you’ll need are:

construction paper
transparency film
permanent markers
acrylic paint
brushes

How to Make the Animal Portraits

I had my students trace the main lines of the printed animal images with a permanent marker onto the transparency. Next, they flipped the transparency over and used acrylic paint to add color to the animal's shape only. Then, they used 2-3 colors of acrylic paint randomly and organically on a sheet of construction paper. Before the paint was completely dry on the construction paper, they put the transparency paper and the construction paper together (paint sides together). The paint blends some, but it is okay. That's the look we were going for.

Two Alternative Ways to do This Project

You may have some students that can take the image and the transparency and jump right in with tracing. However, you may have students that struggle with this. There are several ways to differentiate the tracing process for this lesson.

Model It

Let students watch you identify the most important lines on an image. Those are the lines you need to trace. It requires decision-making, so let students see you making those decisions. Model it. Talk it out with them.

Finger Trace

Have them trace the image with their finger first. They can decide what lines are important without making any marks this way.

Trace Important Lines First

Have them use a marker to trace the most important lines right on the image before tracing on the transparency. This way when they put the transparency over the image the most important lines will be very easy to see. All of this repetition is helpful to students.

Helpful tips

Use a thinner coat of paint on the transparency sheet. It will dry pretty quickly that way.
It feels unnatural to draw with the marker on one side of the transparency and then paint on the other side. However, this is the best method because the permanent marker won't get hidden by the paint, and the paint will be sandwiched between two pages which means it won't flake off of the plastic transparency.
When the paint dries, it should hold the two sheets together. If it doesn't for some reason (like too much moisture in the air), you can slip a little glue between the sheets around the edges, staple it, or add tape. If you tape or staple it together, you can use washi tape to create a border around the edge to cover up the unsightly staples and tape.

And there you have it! I’d love to know if you do this art project in your classroom!

Easy Animal Portraits