Drawing & Painting our Landscapes

During the last two weeks before winter break, we drew and began painting our landscapes.   This resulted in a short demonstration on how to best draw on watercolor paper, so as not to have your drawing show through your painting.  I discussed how pressing too hard will damage the paper by creating a groove that catches more watercolor paint.  Watercolor paper is fairly forgiving and many students had to erase their drawing to make them lighter.  Here's a good example of how light the drawing should be:

Some students were ready to paint, so I went over watercolor techniques and we were on our way...

This was our progress after the first week:

Some of the students are using what is called liquid "masking" on their paintings.  It's a liquid that you place on areas you want to keep white.  In watercolor, there is no white paint... the paper is the white paint.  So, in order to keep our white areas white, it's a good idea to use masking.  We'll use rubber cement pickup squares after our paintings are finished to pull the masking off, revealing the white paper.

Here's a our progress right before the break.  We'll meet right after the break to continue these wonderful paintings!