Best Artists in the Ocean Paintings

As I continue the unit on literacy in the art room, our young artists read the book 'I'm the Best Artist in the Ocean!' by Kevin Sherry, and learned about squid, their tentacles and their ability to squirt ink.

We then created an ocean background using cake tempera and large wash brushes. Next we made a directed line drawing of our artist squids. The pencil drawing was painted with liquid tempera, and then cut out and glued to the background painting. Options for our paintings were to include an artist's cap and/or mustache to the squid character. Younger artists painted solid black lines for the tentacles and older artists created outlines of black filled in when painting the entire body of the squid. I was inspired by fellow bloggers  Dali's Moustache and by This Little Class of Mine among others. I hope you enjoy our "Messterpieces!"