Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Liquid Watercolors, Yeah!!

Here are a few last "bird's eye view" apple still life paintings that first graders did in a lesson posted here. They were using good watercolor paper and SAX liquid watercolors (just red, yellow and blue) diluted with water (about 3 parts paint to 1 part water.) for the background. Students had made the apples on a previous day using red tempera. Since we were practicing a wet-on-wet technique, they outlined the plate and apples (a la Mattise) to keep the watercolors from running into each other from the plate to the background. I love the luscious colors that students created for their backgrounds.

My work today will be to frame them, and then they'll be ready to hang!!

13 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh.... I want to be in 1st grade again. Those paintings are stunning!

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  2. Gorgeous!! Just love these paintings!

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  3. Ooohhh...I love these. The bright pop of red makes the paintings!

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  4. I love liquid watercolors! These are beautiful!

    Nic Hahn

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  5. Just lovely! I also love (actually CRAVE) your clothesline that makes me feel like I'm going on a picnic. Today outside my classroom window: sunshine; blinding snow; driving rain; glorious bright sunshine; roaring winds; blinding snow... repeat... repeat... repeat... what the heck??!!

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  6. What a gorgeous photo with stunning projects! Love, Love, Love them!!!

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  7. Thanks, ladies!! I spent this morning framing them all and sending them on their way back to their classrooms - whew!! I am gearing up for a Kindergarten rotation starting next week, so I spent some time preparing stuff for those lessons. It is hard to believe that it is getting so close to summer!!

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  8. Curious - when you say 'framing' do you mean mounting on construction paper? Or are you doing something more sophisticated than that? They look large, so framing could get pretty pricey!

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    1. Good question -- I didn't do anything very dramatic, but I didn't mount them ON construction paper. With a mat knife I cut a frame (or mat) using black construction paper and taped the art behind it. I know it is a lot more time consuming than stapling the art on top, but I hated to put staples in that good watercolor paper and am hoping that parents take the hint and have some of the kids' works framed for real!! I must say, I don't do this very often -- it took a few hours to do the art for 5 classes (but I think presentation makes a big difference most of the time.) By the way, the paintings aren't as large as they look in the photo. I think they are 11" X 15".

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  9. How beautiful the colors are, and the scale of these compositions makes them breath taking.

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  10. These came out great! Love the colors! Just made liquid watercolors from old markers~it worked great!

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  11. I simply love these apples and felt very inspired after seeing them, so my first graders (her in Denmark we call it zero graders) just painted apples a lot like yours. I did some things a bit different though. :-)
    I put them on my blog yesterday and linked to your page as well.
    Thanks a lot for sharing!
    Lisbeth
    http://bidtafbilledkunst.blogspot.dk/2013/06/dejlige-rde-bler.html

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  12. Love this lesson, did anyone link it to an artist? I'm thinking Henri Mattise? Also, what were the plates and apples outlined with? Going to try to with my 7th graders.

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