liquid watercolor paintings

Last Friday morning, I ran a three hour workshop in the morning for a group of girls who were out of school thanks to a teacher workday.

One of the best parts of running classes out of my private studio is having the ability to work with a parent individually to create a class for a group of friends they put together.

So Friday morning, I came up with a couple of projects focused on animals.

We started with creating sea snails in clay. I had some old shells that the girls used and pulled out some reference material to help them create their own imaginary snails. I brought out wire to use for spikes, antennae, and anything else they could think of.

While those baked and cooled in order to color with permanent markers, we worked on a watercolor project.

I am in love with liquid watercolors for children. In fact, I rarely use pan watercolor anymore because of them. Liquid watercolor allows children to easily get the results they desire while also letting them explore the amazing process of color mixing.

Emperor Penguin and baby, 8 year old

I only ever use the primary colors and it really doesn't take much paint to fill a large piece of paper.  If I give out black paint, it is always at the end, and only on an as need basis for things like panda bears or penguins. Even then, I have never had a kid need more than just a tiny bit.

frisbee loving rainbow dog, 8 year old

The kids love exploring wet on wet, adding salt, blotting, even scratching into their paper and watching what happens with the watercolor.

penguin admiring the northern lights, 8 year old

For this project, each child chose their own animal. They worked on sketching paper, with reference material,  to create their compositions. 

frisbee loving collie, 6 year old

To make this process easier, I suggested they find the different shapes first and put them on the paper and then start connecting them together and creating their animal.

penguin with the northern lights, 8 year old

When they were happy with their sketch, we transferred the drawing using carbon paper onto the watercolor paper. (this process is easy to mimic by just shading the back side of the sketch with the side of a pencil and then retracing the sketch onto the final paper)

day dreaming panda, 6 year old

They then went over their drawing with a black permanent marker and began to paint.

I told them to start with the backgrounds and not to get water on their animals in order to control the color better. I told them to think about where they wanted to add texture to their work with salt and showed them how to create very light color on their paper either by diluting the color on their brush with water, blotting the color on the paper, or going back into the color they had put on the paper by dropping water droplets on top of the drying background (blooming).

penguin, 6 year old

They they began to paint their animals. Again I told them about how some artist (Fauvist) used 'wild beast' color to create mood in their artwork and we discussed how different colors make us think and feel different things.

Then when they were happy with their results, they began coloring their sea snails and before you knew it, three hours had flown by and parents were arriving for pick up.

The morning was so successful, I am now looking at creating a Pro-D day workshop for all upcoming teacher workdays.