More Swimming Self Portraits!

 I first created this lesson around five years ago and it ended up becoming my most popular blog post!

 It's been a great project for exploring and experimenting with a variety of materials and techniques as well as getting students to create artworks based on familiar personal experiences, sensory expression and concepts of self.

I rarely repeat the same art projects over the years as I am always keen to try something new but after 5 years I had to revive this one for a batch of grade ones who were excited about swimming lessons. 

I also had to repost the project as I think that this time the kid's drawings are even cuter - I nearly died of cuteness.

You can see the original project HERE which also has details of the process. 

Contour Hands In Wire

  

I love to combine teaching contour drawing with working with wire - having to transform their drawings into wire sculptures really seems to reinforce the idea of using one continuous line that only follows the outlines of an object. 

 

Last year my grade 5 students rose to the difficult challenge of not only drawing their own hands using a marker (no erasing) but then transforming one of their drawings into wire. It was interesting to see the different approaches individual students used for this project. Some laid the wire directly over their drawings, some used their hand almost as an armature to get the shape, and some really did "freehand" it (so to speak).

I picked up some wooden coasters from a craft shop which served perfectly as a little stand for each sculpture - we just hot glued them right on.

As a group they represent a teacher's nightmare - every kid in the class wanting your attention all at the same time!

Ceramic Mermaids and Mermen

These mermaids and mermen were created by my grade fours last year. I decided it would be best to give the mermaids some modesty by using seashells as fans or bikini tops. (I am not responsible for the well-endowed ladies by the way, that was all the girls and their wishful thinking). The boys also made tridents for their Neptunes. 

Pipe Cleaner Mannequins

Students always enjoy playing around with my wooden artist's mannequin and I often used her to demonstrate how a figure should look in certain poses.

When teaching these grade 4s about figure drawing, I thought it would be great if every student had their own 'dummy' and had them each make a figure using pipe cleaners and wooden beads to represent joints. After using their mannequin to help with their figure drawing all term I then asked each student to arrange their dummy into an unusual pose and we glued them all down onto stiff cardboard bases.