Summary:

Students will create their own diagram of the water cycle.

Learning Goals / Objectives:

1. Visual Art Media – Students will experience a variety of media (oil pastel,
watercolor, tempera and media), learning their names and noting their
properties and characteristics.
2. Graphic Arts – Students will understand that graphic arts can be tools for
learning.
3. The Water Cycle – Students will learn that the water cycle is a process that
includes evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and ground water or
surface runoff.

Background

Setup:

create an art area and gather all the material needed to complete the instructions.

Anticipatory Set:

OBSERVE AND DISCUSS MASTER ARTWORKS and EXAMPLES

Artwork: Rockbound Coast, Cape Ann (1909) Cullen Yates and a water cycle diagram

Discussion questions:
1. What are we looking at? Is it a poster or a diagram? Why not? What would
you call it? (artwork, painting)
2. Can you tell the difference between the sky and the water? How?
3. What is the main color of the rock? Do you see other colors in the rock?
Describe.
4. This is an oil painting. That means the MEDIA used to create this artwork is
oil paint Do you know of other art media? (watercolor, crayon, chalk) These
are all art MEDIA. (Distinguish media from technique.) ART MEDIA is used
to create artworks like drawings and paintings .
5. Is this a poster or diagram? How do you know? Yes, this is a form of graphic
art. Graphic art includes advertising and posters that teach or inform us
about something. It usually includes pictures, words, and sometimes arrows
or other shapes.
6. We are going to create our own poster that teaches us about the water cycle.
We are going to be using a lot of different media, and I’d like you to
remember what media we use, and how we use it, as we make our posters.

Instructions / Activities:

Step 1 (Day 1): PAINT THE SKY AND OCEAN

1. Provide each student with a 9″ x 12″ white sturdy paper (watercolor paper, if possible), pencil, sponge, small container with only 1/4″ of water in the bottom and a watercolor set (colors and brush). Students should also be provided and a watercolor set (colors and brush). Students should also be provided with oil pastels, but these can be shared in groups. Have students put name on paper.
2. Explain: The first step in making our poster is to create a landscape painting. (Check for understanding.) We are going to make it in stages, and we are going to begin with the sky and the ocean.
3. Using a pencil (LIGHTLY), have students draw a sun, near one of the top corners of the painting & and a few clouds in the top half of the painting & and one large cloud, lower on the page and on the side of the painting that is opposite the sun. (Demonstrate several variations, if necessary.)
4. Have students use oil pastel to color the sun (yellows, oranges, reds) and the clouds (white).
5. Explain to students that they are now going to make a watercolor wash. Demonstrate by putting your paint brush into the water, then brushing it against the blue paint. Rinse the brush in the water (it will turn blue). Do this 4 or 5 times, explaining to students that you are making a watery blue paint in the cup.
6. Then dip one end of the sponge into the cup with blue watery paint, and stroke it evenly over your oil pastel drawing. (The oil pastel will resist the paint, and emerge from the blue watercolor intact.) Begin at the top and evenly work your way to the bottom of the paper. Do not go over the wash until it is dry. Stroke once across the paper, and then move down, and stroke once again.
7. Have students complete steps 5 and 6 on their own. If the wash is too light, have students brush more paint into the water and repeat the wash again.
8. Demonstrate how to paint the ocean, and make it different from the sky. Ask students: What color is the ocean? As they name colors (blue, green, purple) add those colors several times to the blue wash created previously. The new wash should have more paint in it, and look darker. Use the sponge and paint only the bottom third of the painting.
9. Have students complete step 8 on their own.

Step 2 (Day 1): Paint the Hills and Rocks

1. Provide each student with a 6″ x 9″ white sturdy paper, pencil, a bristle brush, paper plate and rag or paper towel. Groups of students can share tempera paint (green, yellow, white, brown, black), oil pastels, and water. Have students put name on paper.
2. Have students draw a hill or rock like shape along the bottom edge of the paper. Have them turn the paper upside down, and make another hill or rock shape along the bottom of this edge. Explain that these shapes will be painted, cut out, and glued to the sky painting just completed
3. Encourage students to use the oil pastel to create texture, draw rocks, or simple to add color and design, before they paint the hills with the tempera paint.
4. Have students mix various shades of green or brown on their paper plate. We are going to paint over the oil pastel, and tempera is a water-based paint Predict what will happen? Have them paint over the hill and rock shapes.

Step 1 (Day 2): COMPLETE THE WATER CYCLE POSTER

1. Provide each student with their paintings, scissors, black sharpie markers, and glue. Groups of students may share oil pastel sets.
2. Have students cut out the 2 hill/rock shapes, arrange them on their sky/ocean paintings, (UNDER THE LARGE CLOUD) and glue them in place. Demonstrate how the shapes can overlap to create the illusion of a land mass.
3. Using oil pastel and black Sharpie markers, have students transform the large cloud into a rain cloud, which is dark on the bottom and has rain coming from it.
4. At this point information about the water cycle can be taught. At the end of the science teaching, have students transform their artwork into a poster that explains the water cycle, using appropriate vocabulary labels.

Assessment:

Teacher’s discretion.

Wrap-up / Closure:

(Day 1): CLOSURE

Discuss the process with students: What MEDIA did we use today? What are some of the characteristics of the MEDIA? (Oil pastel is stickier and heavier than crayon. It has oil in it and because oil and water don’t mix, it resists the watercolor. Watercolor wash is very watery. If you add more paint, it becomes darker. You can see the paper through watercolor.) What is the difference between watercolor medium and tempera medium? (Tempera is thicker and less transparent. The oil pastel resists the water-based paint, but not as well as the water color … because it contains less water.)

(Day 2): CLOSURE

Discuss the finished posters. How is graphic art different from a painting? What does it teach you? How does it teach you? What media did we use to create these posters?

Attachments: