Aug 12, 2011

Swimming Self Portraits


These are some of the gorgeous swimming self-portraits made by my grade ones, who are excited to be starting swimming lessons for the first time next week. We talked about what it looks and feels like to swim underwater in a pool and looked at some photos of other children swimming in a pool. The students then drew themselves using oil pastels. To get an underwater look, we then scrunched up the drawings and flattened them out again to create ripples in the paper. We used a blue dye sprinkled with salt for the background. This is the same technique I used for these Swimming Sea Turtles a few years ago. We then used plastic bottle lids to stamp blue and white circles on a piece of blue card for a bubbly picture frame.


19 comments:

  1. I am loving these!They do have an underwater feel. And the bubble printed border is the perfect finishing touch. This would be fun for my kids to do to remember their summers.This one is getting "pinned"!

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  2. Great lesson! This will definitely be one of the first lessons I use after summerbreak. Thanks!

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  3. Awesome art pieces! The children's work is beautiful.

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  4. Makes me want to go for a swim and dive down deep to the bottom of the pool.

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  5. que refrescante idea!! what a refreshing idea!! congrats!

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  6. Could you tell me what you mean by blue dye wash? I would like to do this art project. Thanks! -Michelle

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  7. Michelle, the dyes I use are called Edicol dye - they are similar to food colouring. They come in a powdered form and are mixed with water to create an ink. I think they're an Australian thing (not sure where you are from?) Alternatively you could try some sort of tempera - that may work. :)

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  8. Love this project! Changed it a bit and used it for our first back to school project. Thanks so much.

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  9. I never saw these Anne. They are wonderful!! I love the character that they get when underwater. So cute, I must pin it:)

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  10. Hello, I love your blog and I used this idea with my grade 3 students earlier this year.
    Here is a link to my blog which shows where I have linked to and mentioned yours.
    http://thebackartroom.global2.vic.edu.au/2015/07/07/grade-3-david-hockney-style-swimming-paintings/
    Thanks for your inspiration!
    Shell

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  11. I'm the Editor of Fun Family Crafts and wanted to let you know that we have featured your swimmer project! You can see it here:

    https://funfamilycrafts.com/swimming-self-portrait/

    If you have other kid-friendly craft tutorials, we'd love for you to submit them. Thanks for a great project idea!

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  13. Such amazing work by kids with these colour pencils

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  15. Hello! I have enjoyed looking at your wonderful project ideas! I came across this contemporary artist who also does underwater portraits: https://www.calidagarciarawles.com/ I hope her work offers another resource for those teaching this lesson! :) Best wishes!

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