During this project students had to choose 3 monuments they found interesting. Either composition or concept peaked their interest. Then I went through the photos and helped them find one with good shadows, composition, angle, etc.
Students then decided which colors to use. I encouraged them to stay with warm, cool or analogous colors but sometimes that did not apply to the content. For example, the photo above seemed better represented in red, white and blue.
We used wet on wet style to paint. Meaning the students wet the paper down first and then painted on it so that the colors would bleed and shift around the painting. The we let it dry and added details.
7th grade did the same process with celebrities and 6th grade did small animals.