large watercolors from real life

My youngest just finished her first year of University.

Hard to believe, but kids make time move quickly and it really does seem like it wasn't THAT long ago I was picking her up from her first day of Kindergarten.

But evidently it has and after years of living with me, she knows me well. Evident by the fact that when a dorm "neighbor" was going to through out some plants she had before going home, my daughter said she'd take them because "my mom will do something with them in her art classes".

And so I did.

I thought it would be fun for the elementary class to try their hand at creating a painting while looking at something from real life. I had the bouquet that the five year old had used to create his plaster painting or the succulents my daughter had brought back from University.

All the girls chose the succulents, although they did not all choose the same one.

I had some very large watercolor paper that I had put out because I thought it would be fun for them to work on a something much larger than normal. I also gave each girl a palette of watercolor using the primary colors.

They created their sketches using a marks-all black pencil. Because it is water-soluble, any changes they wanted to make in their marks were easily 'erased' with water.

9 year old

Originally the above art work had two small 'red bumps' (sorry I do not have a green thumb and have no idea what you call that red thing) that she had sketched into the work. While painting, she decided she no longer wanted them and so with water, she just washed them out.

6 year old

I also had the girls work on things like washed with this work to help create values, especially the older two girls. For the younger ones, just understanding that these watercolors do not work like acrylic was the challenge.

8 year old

I'm so impressed with the yellow color this artist mixed in her piece.

6 year old

The girls seemed to really enjoy working big on these works. I love the details each child chose to add to her piece and how each child uniquely worked with the watercolors. I'm always impressed with the variety of work created from the same parameters and the confidence the children have to follow their own path.

My daughter knows me well. Coming up on nineteen years well, which is a lot more time that I care to believe has passed. Not only did I immediately use the succulents she saved from the perils of the dumpster, but thanks to these young artist some beautiful watercolors were inspired by them.