Creative Writing Exercises - Leicestershire County Council

Their Face and Yours
You will need: (some examples of portraits)
What to do:
Section C
Longer
Exercises
• Examine a few portraits, and discuss how the artists have represented their subjects in
terms of status, wealth, personality, relationships, occupation…
• Discuss how a portrait artist would represent the participants.
• Ask participants to write a portrait of themselves.
Start by grouping observations into three categories: setting, characteristics
and personality. Try to identify 4 of each, at least.
• Reorganise the lists into stanzas of three lines, which link one aspect from each list,
for example: “Her massive car and well-groomed hair show her love of fashion and
showing off…”
• Try to make the links as close as possible, in the same way that a portrait artist arranges
clothing etc. to support a view of the subject’s character and standing.
What Do They See?
You will need:
(with a person in it, or an animal!)
What to do:
• Write a description of the room you are in, and its
occupants, from the point of view of the character
in the artwork.
• Give the participants some structure by asking
them to divide their observations into categories:
building, furniture, people, activity.
• Where possible, ask them to adopt the voice of the character in their writing, in order
to emphasise the defamiliarisation between the world of the artwork and reality.
Exercises given by Kerry Featherstone
107
Expresso, P.J. Crook
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