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Each student in Betsey Robinson's second-grade class had a different interpretation of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥'s mountains — round, pointy, big and small in colors like blue, purple, green, orange and brown.

That's what thinking like an artist is all about. 

"It's not what you see when you take a photograph, but what you see in your artist's eye that makes a difference," says artist, Marty Plevel, as she demonstrates how to paint with watercolors.

Agua Caliente Elementary School students were learning how to create a watercolor landscape as part of Pima County's Living River of Words contest. The aim of the project is to educate students about watersheds and wetlands and have them express what they learned through poetry and art.

Completed pieces are entered into the county's contest. Winning entries become part of a traveling exhibit at local libraries.

"Living River of Words is an awesome STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics) project that integrates learning about riparian areas and our unique desert with field studies," Robinson said. "They're painting desert landscapes and integrating their knowledge on riparian areas and watersheds. It's really super cool."

Agua Caliente has participated in the project in the past, but this year, for the first time, they were able to pay an artist and a poet to work with all three second-grade classes thanks to a $1,000 artist residency grant from , an education initiative that connects schools with community partners, grants and educational programming. 

Though the Tanque Verde School District doesn't have a high percentage of low-income students, it doesn't have extra funding for projects like this, Robinson said. 

Leading up to painting, students did field studies at Agua Caliente park and made observations about the animals they saw, the landscapes and the water. They worked with poet Candace Greenberg to write a poem about their impressions.

"It's fun," says Cambry Tolbert, 8. "We learned about watersheds and plains and what the desert is called."

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They also learned about the science of colors and how they interact with each other. 

"Do you remember about complementary colors and neighbor colors?" Plevel asks the class. "The ones across from each other..."

"Make brown," the students chorus to complete Plevel's sentence.

"When blue and yellow go together what do you get?" Plevel asks.

"Green," the kids say.

After watching Plevel demonstrate technique, the students — dressed in huge shirts to protect their clothes — return to their desks and start painting.

Brock Payne, 7, draws blue mountains and places green in the foreground, peeking up through his long hair to see examples in the front of the room.

"Get your brush a little wetter," Plevel tells him. "It'll flow better."

"This is gonna be kinda hard," Brock says, as he blows his bangs out of his face.

"I've got a feeling this is gonna turn out really good," says Jake Martinez, 8, as he uses a paper towel to lift color out of the sky to create clouds — a technique he learned from Plevel.

Once the paintings are finished, students will cut shapes of whatever they want to add to their landscape — cactus, animals, trees — to collage onto the background. 

"She really gets them out of drawing kitty cats, dogs and flowers," Robinson said.