Shakespeare portrait project

My own personal project for the year is to read and see more Shakespeare works. Since the kids share the same space as me, they have been caught in the tide. Mr 9 and Miss 7 and I decided to sit and copy one of the classic portraits of William Shakespeare. 

Droeshout portrait. An engraving by Martin Droeshout as frontispiece to the collected works of Shakespeare (the First Folio), printed in 1622 and published in 1623. (from Wikipedia)

We were aiming for a caricatured, fun impression. This is mine. I love the line drawings the kids did, but they are a bit shy about me putting their artwork online (which is a good thing!).

We wanted to have matching Shakespeare themed tshirts for a Shakespeare festival we were going to. Since buying was expensive and time consuming, we decided to design our own. 

The kids did two drawings each, so altogether we had five. I scanned the drawings into the computer. Then, I edited them in Picasa and put them into a photo collage. I then had five portraits in one file to send off to a tshirt printer. Our lovely local printer, Eco Shopper, printed our little batch of five shirts (extras for friends) on the same day. The photo below is used with the permission of Miss 7 and Mr 9.

It's a fun way to appropriate and display our artistic collaboration.