A little over a year ago I started a series of cartoon dog portraits. (The third series is still being worked on.) I wanted to play with patterns, shapes, and colors. The original six were set in primary colors, accompanied by three 8x10 paintings.

This past Summer Joel S, a k-5 art teacher asked if he could use my dog portraits as a jump off for his third grade students. They learned about positive and negative space, complementary colors, and patterns.

The project took 3 weeks (3hours) to finish and they used paint, construction paper and sharpie. 

I was so delighted to see their work and it looks like they had a lot of fun. 

Joel has a blog for project ideas which serves as an awesome resource for art teachers. Check it out!

The work of Natassja Swift

First six pastel portraits in a daily exercise

Ships To Sea.

I submitted this to a mural call for Norfolk, VA - There’d be text that would accompany the image above.

Ships to set upon the sea

Winds and waves pull them free.

Ships mainly representing the ideas and dreams of youth. 

I initially drew a single character but decided it’d be best to add more characters. The text I’ve also been playing with some with small changes here and there. Below you’ll find some of the rough sketches.

Bob, Devo, Keiko, Patrice, Roscoe, Jeeves

​The second series is now complete I’ll be working on a third set and then two larger ones to finish it all off.

Once I complete those I’ll be working on a series of kids. Not sure how many of those I’ll do but this is what it’ll look like. ​