Summer Workshop Series: Winslow Homer-Inspired Pirate Ships

Winslow Homer (1836-1910) was an American painter known for his seascape paintings.  When looking through his artworks, we see cloudy, windy skies, waves in motion, and dulled colors.  When we browsed through project examples, I came across a project from Deep Space Sparkle that inspired the summer workshop project for this lesson.


Materials
-14" x 16" 70# white paper
-10" x 16" white poster board
-Blue, black, and white tempura paint
-Brushes
-Water
-Water containers
-Your fingers
-Colored construction paper
-Scissors
-Glue
-Pencils
-String
-Images of ships for reference

Objectives
The students will create their own mixed media sea scape using paint and assemblage of paper.  They will create foreground, middle ground, and background in their seascapes.  This project was created for students ages 6-9.

Directions
This project was completed during one studio class in a 2 hour length of time.  We started with creating a paint wash sky on the 14" x 16" paper.  We used blue for the sky, then painted in white and black strokes to blend in for cloudiness.  Once the paper was finished, we put it aside to dry.

Next, the students created wavy texture on the poster board using their brushes, then their fingers! These two steps took about a 1/2 hour to complete.

Once the poster board was painted, we put it aside to dry.

We then created our pirate ships/sailboats using colored construction paper.  Here are a few examples I found on Google and shared with my students for ideas in creating their ships:

Construction of the ship took around 45-50 minutes to complete.  Once the main body of the ship was completed, the students took their "mostly dry" sheet of poster board and cut four strip apart.  Each strip was sit to resemble waves in the water.  We then glue down each layer, placing the boat in between the wavy layers.

Once the layers were glued down, students created the mast, sails, and glued down the roped using string or yarn!

Here was the example I made to share with the students:

And here are my students' amazing creations!