Big Cats Painting

Students have been learning how to draw animals by using contour line and seeing hidden shapes.

They worked on large paper and drew a big cat from a photograph. Then we painted a watercolor background using various techniques...wet in wet, salt, scratching.

Next,students mixed tempera paint to create different values and painted them according to their photo.

Charcoal Owls

I...Love...These...Owls!  My semi-private lesson students learned to work with and layer 3 kinds of charcoal- vine, pencil, and white charcoal.  They also were using a knead eraser as a drawing tool pulling out highlights.  These were done from observation of a black and white photograph.  I did this as a follow up to a lesson in value drawing. I wish I could post more photos, but I am out of photo space on blogger and will have to work on this issue.

Fall Landscape Paintings

I wanted to show Elementary students how to draw and paint a landscape scene in watercolor. With the beautiful cooler weather we are having here in Florida, I thought a fall landscape would be lovely.  I used this lesson as my starting point (thank you, Kathy Barbro) and discussed foreground, middleground, and background when drawing landscapes of any kind.  Students learned about how the clouds look smaller as they get lower in the sky and closer to the land.  This is the opposite of how things appear on land. They also learned wet in wet watercolor technique and wax resist.  They are so bright and colorful. I love using the Crayola Educational watercolors because they teach students to learn how to prepare watercolor and mix them instead of using directly from the palette.

This young lady decided to the landscape to a desert scene and spatter painted part of it for texture, turning a drippy mistake into an advantage!