printmaking and watercolor

I asked the students to create a city, town, or suburb from their imaginative city during the Fanciful Frolic camp through North Vancouver Community Arts Council.

First I gave them the three primary liquid watercolors to explore on watercolor paper.  I also put out some salt, since who doesn't like watching what salt does when placed on wet watercolor?

I showed them a couple of techniques, including wet on wet, scratching, and blooming. (or since we enjoyed making explosion noises when adding water on top of the color, bombing)

When finished, I had cut up some cardboard from the back of old paper pads into three different rectangle lengths for them to dip into black paint to start making buildings. A fun basic form of printmaking!

Did they ever enjoy this process and some of the younger kids could of spent another hour working, but unfortunately ran out of space on the paper! 

7 year old

6 year old

6 year old

7 year old

I found it quite interesting that these two artist were thinking about their finished city from the moment they picked up the watercolor brush, creating an underwater world complete with coral reef above and sand below. Even more interesting, they were on opposite sides of the room all week and were not collaborating.

8 year old

6 year old

This is a great example of making lemonade out of lemons! She pretty much ended up with a black blob on her paper and was quite disappointed. I handed her a white oil pastel and asked her to find an imaginary animal, and out of the black came a four legged bird!

6 year old

6 year old

8 year old, stalagmite cave buildings

7 year old

Love how she created a hilltop from the watercolor on this piece!

When the works were dry, I gave each child the opportunity to go back into the piece with a sharpie pen to create details on their buildings. I gave each child a ruler with the pen if they wanted to continue working with straight lines.

You know a project was a success when you can hear a pin drop in the room. The kids had a great time creating these works of art.