2nd Grade Watercolor Resist Seascapes

My 2nd grade students recently created these watercolor resist paintings based on the work of Dutch artist Willem van de Veld.

First the students viewed a slide show of 6 of Willem van de Veld's paintings. These are the 6 paintings the students looked at:

As we looked at each painting, we discussed the principle of art rhythm. I drew the rhythm that we saw in the water on the board for each painting. Here is what my blackboard looked like when we were done looking at all the paintings:

Then, the students picked one rhythm, and drew it across their paper. Below the line, they drew the same rhythm over and over again in different colors. Then, the students viewed different pictures of boats to put in their artwork, and drew any boats they liked.

The following week, we finished the paintings with watercolors. I encouraged the students to use more than one color in the ocean; perhaps blue and green; some students also added some black or purple. They also painted the sky any way they wanted. We discussed sky ideas such as a sunset, a storm, nighttime, clouds, birds, etc.