Women in the Arts 

 Celebrating the Genius of Women              Orlando, Florida             A 501(c)3 non-profit organization 

2021 CSA Summer Art School

Welcome to Lesson No. 2. Scroll down to find the lesson for your student age group: Preschool, Kids, Tweens, or Teens. 


Text or email the image or video clip of your completed project. Include your first and last name. 

Email Ms. Maria at womeninthearts@gmail.com 

Text (407) 900-5918‬ 


Each project is due preferably the Saturday it is released or within a week. The final deadline per each project is the next Saturday before 2:00 PM ET. 


Awards: Participants who complete and submit all projects on time, are eligible to receive a brand new illustrated/activity book.

Lesson No.2 

Released: July 03

Due: July 03-July 10 before 2:00 PM ET.

Preschool

Fish Painting

Instructor: Maria Guerrero 

This lesson is recommended for ages 3-5

Parental assistance: Yes


View on mobile

Reference Materials: Templates (included in the art kit).

Color Wheel instructions

Fish Template
Related media:

Creature Features: Ocean

By Natasha Durley


Creature Features: Ocean is by author-illustrator Natasha Durley.  Natasha is from England and creates playful illustrations with an emphasis on color, texture, and the natural world. Her work has appeared in graphic design and print media.

Kids 

Jellyfish Painting


Instructor: Lindsay Merwin

This lesson is recommended for ages 6-8.

Parental assistance as needed. 

Mix the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) to make secondary colors (orange, green, purple). Add white to make a color lighter.

Color Wheel instructions

Set-Up Supplies
Plastic table cover
Paper plates
A large plastic cup or container with water
Paper towels/hand wipes
Wear clothes you don’t mind getting paint on.

Art Kit Materials

Canvas
Acrylic paint set
Brushes, round and flat

1

Starting with your white canvas, paint the entire surface blue. It is very important for you to wait until your canvas is completely dry before you move on to step 2!

2

Once your blue paint is totally dry, draw a big umbrella shape with squiggly lines on the bottom. Remember, all jellyfish are different so it doesn’t have to be exactly like mine!

3

Pour out some red paint on your palette and mix a little bit of yellow paint into it, now you have orange! Start filling color in on your jellyfish. I started with the sides and moved inwards.

4

Take some of the orange you just mixed (remember, yellow & red!) and mix a little bit of white in there to make it lighter. Add some of your new lighter orange around your jellyfish. I added some of the lighter color to the bottom and the sides, but there’s no wrong way to do it, put it wherever you would like!

5

Next, take some of your red paint and add it into several spots on your jellyfish, just like you did with the light orange. The dark of the red will be the shadows on your jellyfish, the light orange will be the highlights. To make the highlights stand out even more, add white to the lighter parts of your jellyfish!

6

Experiment with different shades! Try mixing some white into your red, you’ll get pink! Keep layering the different colors onto your jellyfish, the more color variations you have the more detailed your jellyfish will look! Again, there is no wrong way to paint a jellyfish, each one is unique!

7

(OPTIONAL DETAILS): On my jellyfish, I added some white polka dots on top! Also, jellyfish in real life are pretty see-through, so I added a little bit of the blue I used from Step 1 to the jellyfish to make it look more see through.

8

Next, pick one of the colors you mixed for your jellyfish and paint some vertical squiggly lines coming out of the bottom. These will be the stingers! Make some more lines with the different colors you mixed and keep adding them until you have as many stingers you want your jellyfish to have!

9

Using red and the pinks I mixed in previous steps, I made a larger squiggly line down the center of the other stingers. 

10 

Some jellyfish have stingers that are bigger than others so feel free to experiment with the sizes of the stingers!

Related Media:

Life in the Ocean

The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle

By Claire A. Nivola.


Claire is an author and illustrator of many books for children, including Life in the Ocean, which received three starred reviews. She lives in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts.



Tweens

Jellyfish Painting II


Instructor: Lindsay Merwin

This lesson is recommended for ages 9-12.

Parental assistance as needed. 

Mix the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) to make secondary colors (orange, green, purple). Add white to make a color lighter.

Color Wheel instructions

Set-Up Supplies
Plastic table cover
Paper plates
A large plastic cup or container with water
Paper towels/hand wipes
Wear clothes you don’t mind getting paint on.

Art Kit Materials
Canvas
Acrylic paint set
Brushes, round and flat

1

Starting with your white canvas, paint the entire surface blue. It is very important for you to wait until your canvas is completely dry before you move on to step 2!

2

Once your blue paint is totally dry, draw two umbrella shapes with squiggly lines on the bottom. Remember, all jellyfish are different so they don’t have to be identical!

3

For your first jellyfish, pour out some red paint on your palette and mix a little bit of yellow paint into it, now you have orange! Start filling color in on your jellyfish. I started with the sides and moved inwards.

4

Take some of the orange you just mixed (remember, yellow & red!) and mix a little bit of white in there to make it lighter. Add some of your new lighter orange around your jellyfish. I added some of the lighter color to the bottom and the sides, but there’s no wrong way to do it, put it wherever you would like!

5

Next, take some of your red paint and add it into several spots on your jellyfish, just like you did with the light orange. The dark of the red will be the shadows on your jellyfish, the light orange will be the highlights. To make the highlights stand out even more, add white to the lighter parts of your jellyfish!

6

Experiment with different shades! Try mixing some white into your red, you’ll get pink! Keep layering the different colors onto your jellyfish, the more color variations you have the more detailed your jellyfish will look! Again, there is no wrong way to paint a jellyfish, each one is unique!

On my jellyfish, I added some white polka dots on top! Also, jellyfish in real life are pretty see-through, so I added a little bit of the blue I used from Step 1 to the jellyfish to make it look more transparent.

7

Next, pick one of the colors you mixed for your jellyfish and paint some vertical squiggly lines

8

Using red and the pinks I mixed in previous steps, I made a larger squiggly line down the center of the other stingers. Some jellyfish have stingers that are bigger than others so feel free to experiment with the sizes of the stingers!

For the second jellyfish, feel free to experiment with the colors! I did the same process as I did for the first jellyfish but I used greens and yellows instead of reds and oranges.

9

To add some more detail to this painting, I decided to add some bubbles! 

To paint the bubbles, start by drawing in some circles on your canvas.

10

Bubbles are very reflective, so they have very dark spots and very bright spots. Start with the darker areas and border part of the circle with a dark blue. 

11

Think about where you want the light to come from, is it coming from the left side? The right side? That will determine where your shadows and highlights go on the bubble. For mine, the highlights are mostly on the bottom and the right side of the bubbles.

Mix a few different shades of blue for the bubbles, you’ll want a dark blue, a midtone, and a highlight. Paint in those spots on the bubbles where you want the light reflected.

12

As one last little detail, I added two small schools of fish. To keep a consistent color palette, I used some leftover paint I had mixed for the jellyfish. Feel free to add any other sea creatures or backgrounds you’d like!

Related Media:

Life in the Ocean

The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle

By Claire A. Nivola.


Claire is an author and illustrator of many books for children, including Life in the Ocean, which received three starred reviews. She lives in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts.


Teens

Coral Reef

Instructor:  Lindsay Merwin
This challenge is recommended for ages 13-18.
Mix the primary colors (red, yellow, blue) to make secondary colors (orange, green, purple). Add white to make a color lighter.

Set-Up Supplies
Plastic table cover
Paper plates
A large plastic cup or container with water
Paper towels/hand wipes
Wear clothes you don’t mind getting paint on.

Art Kit Materials
Canvas
Acrylic paint set
Brushes, round and flat

 

1

Starting with your white canvas, paint the entire surface blue. It is very important for you to wait until your canvas is completely dry before you move on to step 2!

2

A coral reef is very colorful! Pick a base color for your coral reef and blot it all around the bottom of your canvas. I mixed a purple color for mine.

3

To add some depth and dimension to your base, mix some darker shades and some lighter shades of the color you chose. Think about where you want the light to be coming from and let that guide where you place your shadows and highlights. If the light is coming from above, the highlights will be on the top parts of the coral. If you want the light source to be on one particular side, put the highlights on that same side. The more shadow and highlight variation you have, the more detailed your coral will look.

4

With a different color, start filling in different types of coral. Block the main colors in with one shade then begin adding value with darker and brighter shades. 

5

 There are millions of different shaped coral, some are round, some look like grass, some are spiky, the possibilities are endless! 

6

Keep blocking in more and more pieces of coral until you have a bright and colorful full coral reef. What else can you add to it to help bring it to life? What sea creatures can be found in this environment?  

7

The fun thing about coral is that no two pieces are the same and none of it is perfect, experiment with different shapes and how you can make an interesting composition with pieces that look similar or very different. 

8

Think about what color combinations go well together. Do you want to make some coral monochromatic? Some using complementary colors?

9

With my painting, I decided to add a clownfish and some bubbles coming up out of his mouth. For my clownfish, I used some leftover oranges and browns I had mixed for some of my coral so the colors in my painting would be consistent. Remember, there is no wrong way to paint an underwater landscape, each one is unique and beautiful so you have so many ways to make it your own!

Related Media:

Life in the Ocean

The Story of Oceanographer Sylvia Earle

By Claire A. Nivola.


Claire is an author and illustrator of many books for children, including Life in the Ocean, which received three starred reviews. She lives in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts.


Coming Up Next

  • Lesson #3 | July 10 | Photography

  • Lesson #4 | July 17 | Paper Sculpture: Origami, Kirigami

  • Lesson #5 | July 24 | Mixed Media