For this piece, we were using poster paint and for the first lesson, the emphasis was on practising brushstrokes in the style of the Impressionists. We looked at a number of paintings close-up and when we came to make a start on our own painting, the children were encouraged to think about the overall colour of the scene rather than to paint individual objects in detail.

The children really enjoyed mixing and blending the colours to ensure that were no defined lines in their background.

We will add further details to these paintings next week but I think that they are already beautiful works of art in their own right:

In the second lesson, we changed to smaller brushes and added details to suggest boats and reflections on the water.

The children did a great job of giving an impression of a boat with a few simple brushstrokes:

Here are just some of the finished masterpieces: