Acetate portraits

Written By Sharron Bowers

Acetate portraits are a quick way to create a good likeness for student self portraits.

They provide opportunity for students to observe facial features and dimensions, and capture them in a line drawing.

Having the option to change hair or eye colour allows for individual expression. The choice of background gives an opportunity to learn how colours work together to create good effects.

We’ll explore these ideas below.

Student photo shared with permission.

Materials: what we used -

  • Acetate film, A4 size - also known as overhead projector transparency film

  • Black sharpie markers - permanent ink, fine point, bullet tip

  • Isopropyl alcohol and cotton tips (optional) - to correct mistakes on acetate, use sparingly!

  • Wet strength cartridge paper, A4 size - for the background sheet

  • Paint - acrylic paint for the acetate film and poster paint (tempera) for the background

  • Paint brushes - small flat hogs hair brushes, about size 6 (10mm) for detail, and larger for bigger areas

  • Jam jars - for water, to clean brushes

  • White dinner plate - to use as a paint palette (we got these for $1 per plate at Kmart), they are brilliant palettes!

  • Table covering - something to protect the table, especially when using the acrylic paint. We used old calendars.

  • Coloured pencils (optional) - to add details or fill in spaces on the background sheet

Method:

Step 1: created a line drawing using sharpie pen on an acetate

Step 2: added colour to hair, eyes, mouth and clothes using acrylic paint

Step 3: created a background using desaturated tempera paint

Step 4: attached background and acetate layers together and added finishing touches

Creating the background:

To show the impact of the background colour, the students used my pre-made backgrounds to help them decide what ‘look’ they wanted to create.

Colours desaturated (made softer and lighter) by mixing with white.

Choose 1-3 colours so as not to get an overly busy background and prevent excessive browns/greys forming as the paint mixed on the paper.

Fold the A4 paper in half and open it flat, apply liberal blobs of paint to one half of the paper. Do not attempt to mix on the paper. Fold the paper over again and smoosh it firmly. Add more paint to any large bare patches if needed

In the gallery below you can see a range of different options

Sharron Bowers