Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons


Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, spramani art teacher tips

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons

By Spramani

I want to share eight different ocean water art techniques you can teach kids. These textures can make water maps and other interesting projects. These textures can also create ocean water marks around landforms. These lessons are great for primary to elementary grade students. Older children can do most steps independently.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, Montessori
Salt texture paper, paper watercolor map collaged on top.

Rather than painting water basic blue, use interesting ocean textures. You can turn learning about maps into fun engaging art. Yon can integrate geography with art making. Kids can also use these techniques in other types of art projects.

When children enjoy the process of creating textured papers, the lesson becomes interesting. Learning geography will become more meaningful because of the art they handmade. Children learn in layers and can connect information through the process of expressing. This makes creating more purposeful. Once children create textured papers, they will become more selective. They will be more deliberate with their map planning ideas.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons lessons and curriculum, homeschooling
Ocean current effect was created with painted yarn. I got a small bowl and made a dark watercolor blue, then let the yarn soak up the paint. Then layered around my landform.

Ocean Facts

Here’s a few fun facts you and your students can learn together:

Why is the ocean blue?

Why do some parts of the ocean look darker?

What is a coastline?

What causes waves in the ocean?

How much water covers our planet?

Why is the largest body of water salty?

Ocean Maps

What is a globe?

What is a map?

What are the four orientations to the four directions?

What is a compass rose?

What is a map Legend?

Save all your ocean water textured papers!

Collect and save scraps for future map making projects.

Save every scrap! Collage papers into a compass rose, or bookmarks.

Take kids near water to see the features of water. If you don’t live by a large body of water, check out videos. The Discovery website is great. Look at books and encyclopedias for pictures. 

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, how to
Submerged wrinkled up paper for vintage map look.
Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, compass rose art collage
Collage compass rose with scraps of the textured papers.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons ideas and tips
Water was created by plastic texture. Then a paper map of Africa was painted and glued on top. I made a mini l map legend by collaging with scraps of the plastic textured paper, then painted the other ones. I used letter stamps to create the words. #Wet on Wet Sample of Africa
Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons , earth how to teach
The planet earth was cut from one of the bubble wrap textured papers. Then I painted the contents. Before I glued on the planter to my mini booklet, I splattered white paint on the black construction paper to look like space. So cute!

Art Supplies For All 8 Textures: 

watercolor kids paper

Paper Surface

Watercolor paper (Standard (9 x 12 pad)

Plain white copy paper 8 1/2 x 11, or 11 x 17

Thicker white printer copy paper 11 x 17  (some thing heavy that does not rip easy when wet, maybe 100 lb book weight)

kids paints

Types of paints to use:

Paintbrushes

blue primary mixing paint

Technique Supplies:

  • Yarn or String (any color)
  • White Basic Wax Crayon
  • Spray Bottle
  • Color Wheel (you can find one online and print out to show kids)

8 OCEAN WATER – TEXTURE TECHNIQUES

1.  SALT ON WET WASH

Sprinkle salt on top of a wet wash paint, the salt will start to gather the watercolor pigments. This effect will be different with different grains of salt. With a spray bottle, gently spray water over salt. You will see the texture change and move around. Its fun! Leave to dry completely, then brush off the salt from paper. You might have to scrub hard to get every grain off.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, salt watercolor montessori
Antarctica Map, this was crated by cutting a round shape from the salt watercolor textured paper.
Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, how to homeschool
Tempera teal blue paint, this was so cool how the texture came out. I was really happy with it.
Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, montessori
This match book was made by stabling for different layered papers so the student could later glue in information they learned these topics. I cut a small area of the tempera textured plastic technique. Close up its ‘s pretty.

2. PLASTIC BAG TEXTURE

Crinkle plastic or wax paper over wet paint, let paint completely dry. Then remove plastic from paper. You should see interesting marks left from plastic.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons plastic
This was created with acrylic blue and white paint. I just put it down really rough without blending too much. I then placed plastic on top and smudged around until all paint covered the surface of the paper. This came out beautiful.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, bubble wrap
This was created using our primary blue watercolor paint (Ready Friendly. I layer firmly the bubble wrap, and let dry until the next day. Came out awesome!

3. BUBBLE WRAP TEXTURE

This texture was so much fun to do and easy. I was looking around for plastic and found bubble wrap instead!

Paint the paper with a wet wash of blue paint, then lay the bubble wrap on top. Press firmly, then leave flat to dry for a few hours. Pull off and wow, you will see the texture of the bubble wrap left on paper. If it helps place a book on top while trying.

If  you look at these four small black booklets below. I created the ocean, river, lake and pond.  You can see how great this creates a nice texture and use of scraps.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, montessori landforms
I used black construction paper and folded down a mini booklet. Again so students can go in their and journey their findings. I used the bubble textured paper to create this.
Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, montessori ideas and how to
I have to say this is my favorite. soaking yarn with blue paint, letting dry and waiting to see what will happen. I used the our blue water acrylic watered down.

4. YARN TEXTURE

This was a blast to do! Get any yarn or string, does not matter thickness or color. Put dark blue watered paint into a bowl. Cut lots of long and short strings from yarn. Submerge the strings in blue paint to soak up color. Then creatively place strings in places you image water current around your landform. Leave to dry flat for a few hours, then pull off strings. After you pull them off you can paint a wash of color over the marks.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, creative ideas
After the string part was done. I washed over it with blue and green paint from the dry cake watercolors, then painted the land forms. So cool!
Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons wax rest maps
I made curricular rings around the continents with a large white crayon, then quickly did a water wash around my landform, trying not to get blue inside so I could later go back and paint a different color.

5. CRAYON WAX RESIST 

This ones tricky for kids at first time. You want to have kids draw out the content or land form first, then take a white crayon and draw water current rings around the landform. What’s tricky is you can’t see the white marks your making. Show kids first on a different paper what wax resist does so they understand the technique and effect you’re trying to create.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons
The flora and fauna were done after the brown dried, giving it a very distinct look so it didn’t blend into the brown. I feel like it stands out nicely.

6. PAINTING WITH A SPONGE ON DRY PAPER

If you look closely at the Africa content painting, I went in and painted  brown first and let dry. Then I did a technique called dry watercolor painting over it. So the green would not blend into the brown. If you look closely you see the brown blend with the green and they blend as a wash. So this is called dry watercolor painting, using less water on by paintbrush.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, how to teacher
In a large dis or pan, you can fill with water use pretty much any paint you have. I liked to use this for making the vintage and wax rest papers. This is exciting and kids love doing this. We use our acrylic and primary color mixing paints.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, how to blue

7. VINTAGE MAP LOOK

Get a large blank paper and crumble up slowly and carefully into a ball. Slowly unwrap trying not to tear the paper. Once you have it all unfolded, smooth flat. Dip paper into blue paint prepared before hand. I used our acrylic brilliant blue paint by dripping a few drops in the water. I like to use acrylic better than watercolor because I can make the mixture darker. The darker paint gets into the creases. You will see the paint in the cracks of the paper giving the paper an old vintage look. If you have an iron handy, you can later iron paper smooth for kids to write on.

how to map maps look vintage, kids art projects painting

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons

8. DRY BRUSHSTROKE

Here are some bookmarks we made with our scraps. With the dry scraps of the salt textured paper, I taught some of my students how to make brushstrokes over dry paper. Similar to the sponge painting on top. If you look closely the new small water brushstrokes are clean and don’t blend. We used some of the dry watercolor cake paints with very little water to make nice clean dry brushstrokes.

Kids Art Painting | Ocean Water | Map Technique Lessons, how to make bookmarks

I hope you try these. Love to hear how it worked for you!

Art Teacher – Spramani Elaun

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