Hokusai Inspired Wave

This was another activity I did with my after school students. We are going through famous artists through history. (Previous lessons were Jasper Johns letters, Mondrian Paper collage, Alma Woodsey Adams collage) 

To start the class, we looked at some other famous Japanese wood block prints and Hokusai's work. We also looked at this video of Art with Mati and Dada (a great source to introduce artists to younger students) to create a stronger connection between students and the art we were talking about. 

We recreated the famous Big Wave print by drawing step by step. I wanted them to use a different material for this lesson so students traced their pencil drawing with indian ink. 

Once students finished tracing, they painted their wave with watercolors. Overall, I think that recreating the drawing of the wave was a bit challenging for my young students even though I simplified it a lot while we drew it. As they were painting with watercolors, I had to walk around and point out to them what was sky, water, volcano o boat so it was hard for them to paint freely because they were confused a lot.