Mermaids Love Art: Scuba Self Portraits

Hello second grade artists and art fans of all ages! Here is another lesson in self portraits...scuba self portraits. I love to sometimes teach this lesson in spring time, as the winter winds down and we can start thinking of warmer weather and summer vacation. Now seems like as good a time as any. First, I'll go through some step by step instructions on how to draw the face and some of that scuba gear. There will also be some resources for you at then end featuring how to draw ocean animals, but of course feel free to try some that aren't posted here, as well.

Ok, so first, lets look at the SIZE of the portrait on this paper....it's taking up A LOT of the space, and only the head, neck, and shoulders are seen. When you are drawing a person, ALWAYS start with the head....oval shape, in the middle of your paper.

Two small lines, about three inches apart, for the neck...

Shoulder next! Make sure you curve them. People don't have "robot shoulders" (though your parents may remember a trend in the 80's that says otherwise). Also remember our shoulders come out wider than our heads.

Now for the face. If you like the mask in my finished example above, go ahead and use that. Or you could opt for oval shaped goggles, like the ones below:

You can draw a simple nose with three little bumps, like so:

The mouth looks a little like this....I left a space in the bottom lip, so I can add the breathing tube (snorkel) later on.

Here you see I add the snorkel, and the beginning part of the eyes (two football shapes)...

Inside the football shaped eyes, we need to add the irises and the pupils, so we'll be adding two circles inside one another (those would be called concentric circles)...

Don't forget the eyebrows!

And the ears and hair. When we are in the water, our hair floats away from our scalps, so I drew all my hair lines coming from my head and working outward. Shorter hair=shorter lines. Make sense?

Swim or scuba suit....

And voila...

You may have noticed I added a cute little fish and some bubbles. If you wanted these to look like they were really in front of your body, you could make them on separate piece of paper or cardboard, and glue them on. I've even added little stacks of cardboard in between so the animals look like they are sticking out. Here are a couple how to's for drawing sea creatures...