Week 4-Starting our Watercolor Landscape

This week, we started a long term watercolor project. I gave each student a photograph of a landscape. There are four scenes...beach, mountains, a field and forest. We talked about the horizon line and composition.


Then, we started to sketch our landscape drawings, being careful not to press too hard. Sketching the forms lightly will ensure that we won't see the pencil lines when we paint.



Some of the kids had forest scenes are were concerned about drawing each leaf on the trees. I told them they don't have to do that. Many artists draw and paint trees to suggest leaf forms without drawing each individual leaf. Here's a forest landscape by Monet. Even though the painting is done in oils, the same idea applies:



Leaves are suggested with color and form. We'll do the mountains and beach the same way. The prior three weeks were a good foundation for this landscape drawing. The kids have concentrated on geometric shapes and now they are working on organic shapes.

Here's an example of the mountain scene:



And here's the beach scene:



Next week, we'll cover the four basic watercolor techniques: Flat Wash, Graded Wash, Wet on Wet, and Dry Brush in the beginning of the class. Then, we'll start on our painting.