Watercolor

There is a lot of watercolor happening in the studio right now.

A couple of students in the Preteen/Teen class have been exploring the medium for the past couple of weeks and to mix it up a bit, I brought out one of my favorite papers, which really isn't even paper, for a student to use for a different look at watercolor.

Yupo paper

Yupo is interesting because it is synthetic and the paint never absorbs. If you hate what you are doing, you can actually wipe the surface clean and start all over again. It is a great way to get students to really focus on darks and lights and also about loosening up and letting go since the watercolor has a mind of it's own on the paper.

I think the tiger cub this grade 9 student created is quite incredible and I know after watching her complete the work, several of the other students are anxious to give this a try.

14 year old, tiger cub.  Watercolor on Yupo

And if you don't have access to Yupo paper, you can do the same thing with clear acetate. I actually use it with younger students so they can put the reference underneath for an easier study of finding the darks and lights.

Here is an example created by an 8 year old a couple of years ago using this method.

8 year old, watercolor on acetate

Once the artwork is complete, you need to put a protective coating (Krylon clear coat) on the work so that the paint will not continue to activate if it gets wet. Then when using the clear acetate, spray mount the backside of the work and place on white paper (I use Bristol) for mounting.

In the younger class, I introduced a project I saw on Pat Howard's blog, The Painted Prism.  You can see it here, http://thepaintedprism.blogspot.ca/2012/05/watercolor-workshop-negative-painting.html

Using her instructions, the student created a lovely forest picture. Sometimes it seems silly to reinvent the wheel when you see such a great lesson to help a student discover new techniques and skills. My hope now is that we can take what the student learned and create a work all her own using this idea.

However, the forest this 9 year old created is quite beautiful and I think she was quite excited to discover what you can do by focusing on the negative space and building a work from foreground to background.

I think this piece is just waiting to become an illustration in an original fairytale story created by the student! Oh the possibilities!

9 year old, forest.  watercolor on paper