tropical fish using french dyes

These beautiful fish were created by the Wednesday elementary age class using french dyes.

6 year old

The class picked a tropical fish from the reference folder that caught their fancy and then worked out a sketch of just the fish using copy paper. I encouraged them to draw large.

I find that by letting kids work out their drawings on "throw away" paper improves their drawings significantly since it removes the fear of "ruining" the good paper. It also gets rid of the need of erasers since kids can use a window or light box to retrace all the great things about a drawing and then focus on just the few things they feel are not working in the sketch. Once the girls liked their contour line drawing, they used carbon paper to trace it onto the very large watercolor paper and then went over the lines with permanent black pen.

8 year old

Some of the girls repeated their single fish drawing several times when creating their final composition.

6 year old

Each girl started with three colors of their choosing for the background. They applied the dye with a wet on wet technique, carefully making sure not to get water on the fish. This helped keep the dye from moving onto the fish. Some of the girls tried a blotting technique while the background was wet to add coral or seaweed, others added salt for interest, and some did both.

10 year old

The paper was so large that by the time they completed the background it was dry enough to start the fish. Then once the fist were completed, the girls could go back into the background on the areas they blotted to add coral or seaweed.

9 year old

I am amazed at the final work produced by the girls. It's so impressive. The tropical fish were a perfect choice for the girls to use for exploring french dyes on paper. They seemed to love the process and exploring what the dyes would do on their works and in the end were so pleased with what they had created from a simple contour drawing.