For some reason, I find watercolor the most challenging of mediums for the preteens and teens. It is so hard for them to "let go" and allow the watercolor to do it's thing in creating their work.
My hope was to have the students spend the evening experimenting with the watercolors while observing a sunflower and then create another watercolor on their own with what they learned.
Each girl created a quick light pencil sketch of the sunflower on the paper.
They each had a palette with red, blue, yellow and brown sienna.
I first showed them a wet on wet technique, where they added red and blue to the background.
The first challenge was keeping the colors light so they could build upon them. I also wanted them to develop an understanding that with watercolor, leaving some of the paper white is important.
After creating the background they added some yellow and red to their petals. Again keeping things light, I felt like I repeated that particular statement many, many times.
"keep things light. keep things light. keep things light" I sounded like a broken record.
Finally the artist quickly washed a brown in the center of their flowers and using the back of the brush created a stippling effect to indicate the seeds of the sunflower. Banging the top of the paintbrush on the paper was a big hit. Obviously we all had some frustrations we needed to let out that night.
Then we dried the artworks with a blowdryer.
Now I wanted them to have the opportunity to explore painting the negative space and also explore how watercolor works when applied over color that is already dry, so the girls then mixed their own blue and began painting the background in order to bring out the flower petals. At this time, I also had them start to define a stem by painting the negative space also.
When happy, they all created a deep purple by adding some brown to a red and blue mixture and went back over the brown of the flower center, added more stippling, and then took out some of the color by pulling it back out with the brush and drying it on a towel until they were happy.
They dried their artworks once again and then added a stem and went back into the petals with a orange yellow for shading.
Although there was a lot of moaning throughout the process as they fought giving up control, they all succeeded in the end. My hope was to show them by example that loosening up will allow the process of creating art to play a bigger role in their future creations, creating some beautiful and pleasing results.
For one child, I think she found her medium! She took to watercolor naturally and quickly created this beautiful poppy painting when finished with her sunflower study.
For the others, they added some new techniques and hopefully let go of a bit of control moving forward in their works of art- allowing process more of a role while creating.
I have already seen the results of that in a needle felt sculpture they are currently working on, not getting so wrapped up in what they want to happen and being open to creating based on what is happening.
So at the end of the day (or class), I'll call that a successful project.
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