Art Endorphins: Message in a Bottle

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In my last post I showed you these two beautiful 1st Grade paintings. Did you guess what they were?

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Here is a little hint: We have been riding a "wave" of excitement in the art room...

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My 1st graders have created some beautiful landscapes this year so we decided to explore the ocean with some colorful seascapes. I really had fun designing this lesson and it is one I will definitely repeat! Here is what we did:

1. Painted wave lines with white tempera horizontally across light blue paper.

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2. Using a palette of white, blue, turquoise, purple, and green we mixed cool colored tints and filled the spaces between the white lines. This helped keep the white caps on the waves intact and made filling the negative spaces between the lines fun. The lines help the little guys focus on filling small spaces with color rather than being overwhelmed by the entire page.

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They LOVED mixing all these great colors!

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3. Using a similar technique we chose a palette of white, yellow, orange, magenta, and red to paint a sky on yellow paper. We painted the clouds in white then mixed other warm colors to create a sunset or sunrise sky.

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I love how1st grade minds work - look at the shapes in these clouds...

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4. I had my students trim the top edge of their ocean paper to create a wavy edge. They just cut along the top white line as a guide. Be sure to reinforce that they only cut the top wave NOT ALL the wavy lines...there is one in every crowd and we teachers have to anticipate every move, eh?

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5. Glue the water to the sky. Seems simple but monitor to make sure they align the two papers so the sea and sky match well. I found putting a double line of glue on the bottom edge of the sky paper then laying the water on top works well. *The original sheets were 12" x 18"so from this point on the work is a little more difficult to store due to the enlarged size.

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6. Make a boat & glue it in place. We used black paper and oil pastels. We had fun designing mast heads, sails and naming our boats. I suggested "The Whisper" as a name but they didn't take the hint - boat building is noisy. The art room was ringing with happy voices. I am having the kids use their art journals to write a story from the ship captain's point of view. We are thinking about sending the stories out on our Artsonia Gallery as a virtual "message in a bottle". TOO MUCH FUN!

This boat should be named "The Look Out"...

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Love the details - here is a fierce dragon Mast Head...

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And check out the mermaid...

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Here are a few of our finished seascapes - we definitely experienced some art endorphins after all the work. Aren't they great? If you use our lesson be sure to let us know how your students like it!