Tessellation portraits

this is a 2 part project starting with tessellations.  students use a square of poster board as a template. They design their own tessellation and then apply it to a background.  they are then painted in with acrylics using either a warm or a cool color scheme.  Meanwhile I take their photographs and I digitally manipulate them using photoshop.  I adjust the contrast, changing to grayscale then posterizing it for the students.  I print this off and then go back to photoshop and flip the image.  1 more print in we are ready to trace.  students put their image on a window and trace the value shapes.  the resulting image looks like a paint by number project.  using their original photographs for guidance, they paint in different values of color.  this is then cut out and glued on top of the Tessellation page.