Who doesn’t love hippos? Aren’t they the strangest creature? My
second and third grade students agree and we discussed the
anatomy of the hippo as we drew their robust bodies. Using a
basic oil pastel and watercolor resist, the children turned
their drawings into an underwater collage. To start, the
children drew a hippo onto a piece of 12″ x 18″ white paper with
an oil pastel. After drawing the body, the students drew a water
line through the middle of the hippo’s head just below the eyes.
Everything above this line was considered the sky and below; the
murky water. I provided liquid watercolors so the children could
run their brushes over the entire drawing. For a final flourish,
children used foam 3-D dots to add fish and birds and tissue
paper for watergrass. Lots of techniques in this lesson:
directed line drawing, watercolor resist, oil pastel rendering,
composition and collage. Whew! Second and Third grade Hippos….