Students began by discussing and looking at the horizon line and perspective – objects appeared to look smaller as they disappeared further into the distance.

Session 1: Painters masking tape was added to the borders of an A3 sheet of white cartridge paper. The students added a horizon line with dark blue paint and below the horizon blended the cool colours of the ocean in mostly horizontal strokes. The sky was added in lighter colours of blue, above the horizon. While the backgrounds were drying the students then created different sizes sailing boats by cutting shapes from brown paper and the pages of old books and colouring with dry poster paints in colours that would stand out against their ocean.

Session 2: The students cut out the parts of their sailing boats and placed them onto their background thinking about the perspective, having the larger boats in the foreground of the picture (near the bottom) and the smaller boats nearer to the horizon line. They then used black marker to draw some birds, again attempting to add different sized birds to help give some perspective to their artwork.

Year 2
Grey Street Primary School, Traralgon