Spooky Self Portrait

What You Need:

• Paper
• Coloring supplies such as crayons, colored pencils, and markers
• Other decorative items such as ribbon, decals, glow-in-dark paint, glitter, rhinestones, or googly eyes
• Mirror

What You Do:

1. Use the computer to view of variety of Halloween creatures with your young artist. Do a search on Halloween coloring pages. These will be oriented toward younger children vs what you might find searching for masks, costumes or monsters.
2. Which ones are his favorites? He might like the silly ones like jack-o-lanterns, clowns or children in animal costumes. Or he might prefer the mildly scary, like scarecrows, vampires and mummies. Whatever he likes will work.
3. What is it that makes each of these creatures look like itself? For a mummy, it might be the wrapping. For a vampire, the fangs. A scarecrow has a rustic hat and a jack-o-lantern face.
4. Now help him consider how he can draw each of these things and still look like himself. Maybe it is his glasses or his hair. How can he combine his own unique look with his three chosen Halloween creatures and be both himself and 100% monster?
5. Once he’s given a little thought to this, it is time to make his drawings. Working on one large sheet of paper, have him draw himself as each of these Halloween creatures. He can draw with anything that he would like, creating scary black and white or silly, brightly colored portraits. The only limit is his imagination.

Expand on this activity by asking him to draw a family portrait with each person in your family as a mummy or a Frankenstein’s monster. How can he make each of you look like yourself and the monster as well?