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!

Art Enrichment Students' Work On Display at the Pioneer Coffee Company

Hi everyone! We've missed two classes because of all this bad weather and snow. I hope everyone's been staying warm and taking some time to paint or draw on their own to pass the time.

I wanted to let you all know, that the students' watercolor landscapes are on display at the Pioneer Coffee Company on Main Street in Plain City! They've been given a very prominent spot right in the front of the coffee shop, right next to other local professional artist's work. Please go in and take a look at them... they look fantastic all together.

And, please support the Pioneer Coffee Shop and thank them for agreeing to show the kids' work. :)



UPDATE:

I just got a really nice e-mail from Jeremy at the coffee shop...

Hi Hilary,

Its Jeremy from Pioneer Coffee. The art work is all hung on the wall and looks GREAT! I hope all of you can make it out sometime soon and see how much it livens our place up. Just wanted to say thanks again for the participation and contribution. One of our main visions is reaching out and being very much involved in this community, and this was a great step in that direction. Hope to see you soon!!

Jeremy

Week 8- Finishing our Watercolor Landscape Paintings

I'm a bit late in putting up this post... sorry about that. Last Tuesday we finished our watercolor landscapes by adding some detail. We used watercolor pencils and I showed the kids the different ways you can manipulate them. You can draw on wet paper with them, draw on dry paper and then blend them with a wet watercolor brush, or you can just draw on the dry paper if you want crisp lines. They really are very versatile and can give your painting lots of exciting detail.

I didn't bring my camera this past week. However, you'll all have the opportunity to view the students' work at the Pioneer Coffee Company soon. The owner has agreed to exhibit their paintings and I plan to bring them up there and hang them in week or so. I'll let you all know when the big unveiling is, so that you can check it out. I think you'll be impressed at what they've accomplished.

This week, we'll be starting our paper mâché animal sculptures. We'll be drawing from photographs to get more acquainted with the shape of our animals. And we'll also be gathering ideas for objects that will work well as a base or armature for our sculpture. The kids seem really excited to start this next project!

Week 7- Continuing our Watercolor Landscapes

Today we continued painting our watercolor landscape paintings. I talked about layering color while emphasizing taking your time.


I talked a bit about local color... which is "The actual color of an object or surface, unaffected by shadow coloring, light quality or other factors." In other words, the local color of a red apple, is red. But, that red may have shades of other colors in it if you look closer.... like green, yellow, orange or even blue or purple. The same goes for trees, grass and mountains. They may look green, but if you look closer you'll see yellow, orange, brown, etc.



Here's their progress so far:



Next week, we'll continue with these paintings. Mrs. Luker's got some watercolor pencils and we'll learn about ways to incorporate more detail into our paintings with them.

Looking ahead, Mrs. Luker and I have discussed some projects we'll be tackling in the near future including paper mâché animal sculptures and Aboriginal Dreaming paintings using a Contact Paper/acrylic paint technique. With that in mind, we are asking parents to start saving newspapers for our sculptures. Also, if you have any empty water bottles, paper towel tubes or wire around we can use that for the armature of our paper mâché sculptures. You can start sending those supplies in with your child any time in the next couple of weeks.

See you next week!

Week 6- Beginning our Watercolor Landscape Paintings

Last week, we talked about the different ways we could manipulate watercolors by trying a flat wash, graded wash, wet on wet and dry brush techniques on a practice strip of paper. This week we began to lay in the background of our watercolor landscapes. We talked about taking our time and layering colors.



I told the kids that watercolor is different from oils and acrylics, because it's hard to change or go over a color if you aren't happy with it. You sort of get what you put down with watercolor and that's why it's a good idea to take your time and think about where you are putting color and how much color you are putting down.



Also, unlike oils and acrylics which are opaque paints, watercolors are translucent. In other words, if you want white in your painting that means not painting on that part of the painting, as the paper is your "white", as you can see through the paint to the paper below.

The same goes for lighter colors like yellow. If you are painting a green field and there's a bit of yellow in there, it's best to leave the yellow part blank, paint the green, and then go back in and paint the yellow part. If you just paint green and then try to paint yellow over it, you won't end up with a light bright yellow.



Watercolor is challenging and requires some forethought, but the kids seems to be doing a good job of figuring this out.

Here's their progress so far:



We'll continue to lay in the backgrounds of our landscapes when we meet again after the break. The following week we'll talk about how to paint the more detailed parts of the foreground in our landscapes.

Have a great holiday break and we'll see you in 2010!!

Week 5- Exploring Watercolor Techniques

This week, we explored 5 different watercolor techniques.

The first one we tried was a flat wash. Basically, it involves loading the brush with water and paint, making broad strokes back and forth to lay in an even tone of color. This is useful when painting a background or large solid area.



Then, we did a graded wash. This is useful for laying in skies or water to show depth.

Then, we did a wet on wet technique. We used our brushes to saturate the paper and then made strokes of color on top to see what happens. Using more than one color makes those colors bleed together. I think this was the kids' favorite, because it you end up with such a unique results. Wet on wet is a technique that is truly "watercolor-esque" and can't really be duplicated in oils or acrylics.

Next, we did a dry brush technique. This is used to lay in broad saturated strokes of color.

Finally, we layered some color over part of our flat wash. We talked about how layering color is a way to mix colors right on the paper. The transparency of watercolor lends itself to layering.

Next week, we'll start on our landscape using the techniques we went over today. Here's all the techniques, in a row:



By the way, I'm trying to collect white (black doesn't work... can't see the colors well) styrofoam containers for paint mixing.

I'm looking for the smaller ones... around 5 1/2" x 8". Please send them in with your kids if you can. Thanks!

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.