The Amazing Face Story Activity is an arts-in-education exercise to do at home with kids or in the classroom after seeing Christopher Agostino’s StoryFaces programs.
This hands-on activity was developed in my school residencies as a way to give kids their own unique experience in the visual storytelling they see me demonstrate in performances. The goal is to get kids to create an original story starring themselves, first through a drawing exercise, and then as a written story meant to be told. For the drawing, students can use the accompanying Drawing Form (pdf below) or draw their own big face oval that has a little face on the mouth — to create the face-on-a-face image I use for animating stories in my performances.
The idea is simple enough to be very flexible, and I’ve done this activity in schools with kids in elementary through upper grades as a creativity generator and to expand their tools for telling their own stories.
Some kids are more original than others, some are not — and that’s ok. I’m ok with kids using familiar tales (like “Little Red Riding Hood”) or scenes from movies, video games, etc., or if they re-create the stories they saw in my performance — as long as they make themselves the central character in the story, because that will bring their imagination into play.
Some are more skilled at drawing, some are not, and that’s ok too. I tell students to just draw the things in their story as best they can — not to worry how good they look — because they will be telling the story as they show the drawing, they’ll be able to explain the images. Their drawing ability should not be a limit to their imagination.
Kids should get a chance to see my StoryFaces performance before doing the activity, or you can go to The Amazing Face Story video to see my own story of how I learned to turn a face into a story. See more examples of faces I’ve painted like this at The Amazing Face Gallery. You can also download pdfs of the drawing form and instructions here:
———— Instructions ————
You can download and print the pdf Drawing Form of a big face with a little one on it or make your own face-on-face drawing to begin.
1 — START by drawing your story on the top part of the big face. You are going to be the star of your story, so make it about your dreams and wishes about what you want to be or do, or maybe some place you’d like to see or an adventure you’d like to have. Or put yourself into a story you already know, like a folktale or a story from a book or my show — hint: don’t worry if you don’t know how to draw something for your story, since this is a story to tell while you show your picture, you will be able to say what everything is. Just draw it as well as you can.
2 — THEN, put yourself into the story by drawing a picture of yourself onto the little face at the bottom of the big face — hint: you can draw yourself like you really look, or you can change how you look to fit into the story — so if your story is about being an astronaut, you might draw yourself in a spacesuit.
3 — Write the story after you draw it. Once you’ve completed the Amazing Face Story drawing, give your story a title and then write it out on another piece of paper– hint: when I’m writing a new story to tell, I try to imagine how I might tell it to a friend, and it helps me to read it out loud sometimes as I’m writing.
4 — Finally, SHOW and TELL the story to someone — a friend, your family, your class. Show them your drawing while telling them your story. Stories are meant to be shared, and they grow in the telling — so don’t be surprised if your story grows and changes as you tell it to people. A Story isn’t Finished until it’s Told.
————— Some Suggestions —————
I have kids do simple pencil sketches for their Face Stories first, with no colouring, so the focus remains on developing the story and not on the quality of the drawing. In class settings, I do all I can to encourage kids to create the most imaginative stories they can, so I try to free them from worrying about drawing skills, or spelling or any limiting factors. Create the story first, you can fix and improve anything later.
Students should start by drawing the whole story idea first onto the big face, before they start drawing the picture of themselves on the little mouth — that can allow the story they come up with to change how they depict themselves.
They should write the story out after the drawing. As an educational exercise this is designed to give students new strategies for developing a narrative story through visual imagery, and I try to get kids “thinking with their pencil” by focusing on the drawing first, and maybe a title, before they write it out.
To complete the experience, the kids should tell the story as they show the drawing, to anyone they can — family members, classmates — and preferably let them tell it more than once. One learns as a storyteller that you don’t really understand a story until you tell it to an audience. Stories grow and change as you tell them and experience the audience response. It is important to give a young storyteller that chance to bring their Amazing Face Story to life in the telling.
Learn about all we do at: agostinoarts.com
Related articles
- Learn about Christopher Agostino’s StoryFaces and The StoryFaces Movie
- See the video: What Is A StoryFace?
- See more faces at The Amazing Face Gallery
