In this article, the author describes an underwater scene composition for elementary-education majors. This project deals with watercolor with crayon or oil-pastel resist (medium); the beauty of nature represented by fish in the underwater scene (theme); texture and pattern (design elements); drawing simple forms (drawing skill); and composition (design skill). Watercolor and crayon resist is simple, but its effect is beautiful. Teaching compositional strategies is one of the objectives in this project. Composition can be difficult to teach; one of the reasons is because recognizable images are so powerfully meaningful in and of themselves. Viewing them as mere visual and formal elements is not natural and can be difficult. Another reason is unless one applies many design principles together at the same time, a satisfactory result cannot be achieved. If students give an earnest effort to each step of the project they not only learn design principles easily, they will end up with an artwork of which they can be proud. (Contains 1 note.)