BCWMS VISUAL ART & DESIGN
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Learning Line and Watercolor Techniques

10/14/2018

1 Comment

 
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Chris
We learn best by doing. 

When teaching techniques, it is great to do demonstrations and show students how to use materials and the different things they can do. I have found it is best, however, if I can engage them in an activity that they do and then can decide if they would like to adapt independently to another situation. 

That is what mini-challenges, like this line and watercolor portrait, is all about in my classroom. 

To start, students take a set of notes that define line, various line directions (and we even do a little dance for this part), and then put those lines into action through a series of portraits.

In their sketchbooks, they create a bilateral continuous contour line portrait, a dominant hand-directed contour line portrait, and a non-dominant hand-directed contour line portrait using various classmates from around the room as subjects that switched for each of the drawings.

After these drawings are complete, students were given a 6x9 inch sheet of watercolor and a white oil pastel to translate their sketches onto, creating a composition on the page with the lines.

The following day, students used their watercolor paper with the oil pastel drawings on them to experiment with a variety of watercolor painting techniques. We went over wet on wet, wet on dry, salt, sponge, resist, and a couple of ways you can use the air from your mouth to get a splatter effect on the page. 

Once the watercolors were dry, students went back in with sharpie and made choices about where to add emphasis. This was a fun way to talk about materials, abstraction, and how artists can adapt ideas for future projects. 

I know students will use these concepts in different ways throughout the term and I look forward to seeing their results. 
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Reilly
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Jessica
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Serenity
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Reyenan
1 Comment
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    Janine Campbell

    Teaching Visual Arts since 2004 and making images since picking up a crayon

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