Lincoln as a 42x56 GIF (2 colors):
The picture I worked from, FYI.
Assuming we cut 6x8 tiles from sheets of paper/whatever, 42x56 works out to laying out 7x7=49 sheets of tiles. 6 of them are solid white. None are solid black. I consider 6/49 to be a happy accident, since solid is "boring". This didn't even occur to me until I started breaking it up.
Below are the plans for those 49 sheets, reading left to right, top to bottom. If your browser window is wide enough to allow 7 images across, you'll see Lincoln here.
Printable run-length encodings for the individual 6x8 tiles.
Printable grids for coloring, or pasting squares of black construction paper.
BONUS ACTIVITY: A great year-long activity for younger children is the Lincoln Penny project. Print out these cards. Have the children bring in pennies and affix them where the circles are on each card. (Things look best if the pennies are all glued on showing Lincoln's head (upright).) Then, all of the cards can be mounted on a larger poster board. Each card has a tiny annotation telling which column and row it belongs in. This activity doesn't show anything about compression, but does emphasize the idea that pictures can be made up of dots - of any size.
