How to Make a Waterscape with Markers

 I know that spring literally just started (thanks a lot daylight savings) but I am ALREADY counting down the days to summer break…

Not only do I look forward to some much-needed time off from the classroom, but I also just love the overall event of SUMMER. It has always been the time where I have the most fun whether it´s going on vacations to the beach, spending all day at the pool with my friends and family, late night bonfires and cookouts, summer camps, outdoor movie nights…

It genuinely gives me so much joy and excitement.

As an artist, I also love the aesthetic of summer. I was watching the Studio Ghibli movie Ponyo the other night and I feel like it perfectly captures the feeling of summer. All of the vibrant patterns and tropical colors just breathe so much life into that movie artistically….

I wanted to make an art project that captured that same life and vibrancy. I became heavily inspired by the artist Koyamori as well as the amazing water drawings on TikTok and Pinterest.

After a bit of brainstorming, I made this project tutorial in which I titled “Waterscapes”.

Supplies Needed:

• Markers (Alcohol or Water-based)
  I highly recommend giving your students color sharpies or other alcohol-based markers if your budget can handle it. The colors will be crisper, cleaner and bolder. But you can absolutely do this project with Crayola markers if that is all you have!
  
• Cardstock or Bristol paper
  I strongly discourage doing this project on regular drawing paper because the texture will completely soak up the ink in your markers and dry them out quicker. Bristol or even white, sleek cardstock works the best for this.
  
  I definitely wouldn’t go too large for this project. It took my students a deceptively longer time than I anticipated due to all of the moving parts of it. We did 8.5 x 11 and it worked out perfectly. I did have a few advanced students who wanted to do a larger piece and they chose 12 x 18, which was a lot more time consuming.
  
• White gel pens for touch ups (optional but highly encouraged)
  
• Hot glue/guns
  
• Cardboard or foam board scraps

WATER DRAWING PRACTICE

The first thing we do is spend a day practicing exactly how to draw water. I give my students a scrap piece of cardstock paper and we block it off into 2 sections using washi tape.

Then we pick 2 values of the same color. Example- if we want our water to be blue then we pick a light and dark blue. I walk them through how to draw the shapes of the water first. 

I tell them to draw ¨organic, curvy puddle shapes¨ as opposed to perfect oval or circle shapes. The shapes also need to be close together but not actually touching. Then we color in our shapes with the LIGHT COLOR FIRST and then go back and add shadows around the edges with our dark color (For more detailed steps, scroll at the bottom of the post for the lesson link.)

Once we completed a blue pattern together, I let them practice the 2nd one on their own picking their color scheme. Some stayed with a blue color scheme and others branched out and played with others such as purple, pink, green.

TIP: Something that helped my students draw this design better was explaining to them what each part of the pattern represented.

The WHITE areas are the very top of the water, the LIGHT color is the very bottom of the water floor and the DARK areas are the shadows that are created from the light shining on the top of the water.

STARTING OUR PROJECT

Once we have practiced the water pattern, students then recreated it on their actual project sheet, choosing their own color scheme. I like having them block off the edges with washi tape to get a nice clean edge.

After they add all their colors, I encourage them to take a white paint marker or white gel pen and clean up their edges. This makes a big difference!

PICKING OUR WATER ITEMS

Now itś time to put some stuff on top of our water! Every student gets another blank sheet of cardstock paper to draw all of their items on.

I require everyone to have 5-7 lily pads (all different sizes) and 3-5 other items such as flowers, animals, pool items, beach items, etc.

I made several handouts to give them to use for reference and ideas. Some students drew objects from the handouts and others came up with some of their own things!

After we draw and color our objects, we cut them out with scissors.

ASSEMBLING OUR WATERSCAPE

We did this with our graffiti project and I liked the effect so much we did the same thing with this project.

We take a hot glue gun and glue all of our water items to scrap pieces of cardboard. I had a few empty Amazon boxes in my art room that I had a student cut up in small square pieces for me with a giant pair of scissors. 

Then we glued the pieces to our water drawings- giving everything a 3D effect. 

I was SO excited with the results and so were all of the kids. They kept taking pictures of their work, sending it to their friends and saying ¨look what I drew! I ACTUALLY drew this!” Always warms my heart to see them get excited about their work. 🙂

If you would like to try out this project with your classes, here is the link to the TPT lesson with all of my step-by-step PowerPoint, handouts, instructions and demo video!

Hope you are all enjoying some good sunshine wherever you are.

Happy Art Making!