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.

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!

Shell Contour Lines

Elementary students are learning about contour line and creating these beach-y shell pictures with their drawings.  Liquid watercolors are sprayed on for the textured background and they are using a variety of colored papers to draw their shells.  Students added 3D dots to raise the shells off of the page and give it some dimension.  These are very bright and colorful!

Zebra in Watercolor...sneak peek

I love this guy, er, or gal.  Here is a preview of a color theory lesson I will be teaching later this year.  So much fun!

Statue of Liberty

I had lots of fun with the elementary students in our Paint America Summer Workshop making these awesome Statue of Liberty paintings in watercolor.  Aren't they awesome?! We used metallic watercolor for the statues and Crayola Educational Watercolor for the rest of the painting.

Georgia O'Keefe

Students learned about the work of O'Keefe and while we did look at and discuss the enlarged flower paintings she did, I thought it would be fun to focus on her cityscapes and how she captured light in these paintings.  Students did a mixed media project which included a watercolor background and printmaking project over it. This took two class periods to complete, as most of my projects do. Lots of fun! Students were very creative in their use of building design and some included mountain ranges.

Winslow Homer

I love Winslow Homer's coastal scenes and genre painting.  Students learned about his work and the importance of his use of watercolor as a medium for completed paintings.  Older students worked on painting a seascape of their own in watercolor learning several techniques: wet in wet, wet on dry, glazing, and more.They also did all their own color mixing with a Prang palette!

Younger students worked on a simpler version of this painting while still learning these same watercolor techniques and a wax resist. Some of the students chose a moonscape while others did a sunset.

Frank Lloyd Wright

We were studying the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright this week and his modern design for his time.  Students created texture with watercolor techniques and used these to design their own houses for a refrigerator magnet.  Students glued pieces to a rectangle tag board base and attached a magnet to the back. All levels participated in this project and the results were very creative! If you are ever in Pennsylvania, take the time to visit Fallingwater.

Watercolor Color Wheel

This project will be explored in the Winsome watercolor class for older students, a fun change in color for tropical plants and it is easier than it looks.