Project Title: Lift the Flap Midnight Zone Ocean Drawings
Medium: Drawing – Narrative Project
Grade Theme: Oceans and Fish

Overview: Students will create deep midnight zone ocean landscapes with flap windows to see hidden elements, drawing with watercolor pencils and blending with water and brushwork.
Art Skills: Drawing, painting
Process: Students will plan and sketch the landscape of their deep oceans. They will draw the ocean floor adding textures, shading, and color.  Art teachers will cut flaps in the landscape. Students will draw the inside of the window pictures, then blend with water and brushes. Finally, the top landscape sheet will be glued to the window sheet.
Materials: Construction paper Mixed Media Art paper, watercolor pencils
Tools Provided by Classroom: Scissors, pencils, glue
Vocabulary: Ocean Midnight Zone: The ocean's midnight zone is a region between one and four kilometers deep, where little to no sunlight penetrates the frigid water.
Additional Resource: Link to Art History and Connection
Multiple Subject Integration: science, geography and biodiversity, ecosystems, food chain.

*Please note that samples were made by teaching artists.  Students will be encouraged to make their own versions of this project. Please DO NOT show students these samples in advance of the art lesson

Description Summary: Today students had a special art lesson making lift-the-flap drawings of deep-sea environments. They observed and drew topographic features and creatures that populate the deep sea using professional watercolor pencils which they blended and painted with watercolor brushes.  They planned and made hidden elements that can be revealed by lifting the flaps of their paintings.