Wintery Trees…Watercolor Fun

Wintery Trees…Watercolor Fun

Medium:  Watercolors and oil pastel

Reason for Less:  To teach the blending and use of watercolor and the relationship/effect between oil pastel and watercolor

Label: Line Drawing

Prep Time:  10 minutes

Preparation prior to class:  Limits to only gathering supplies

Class TIme:  1 hour

Materials:  

• 9x12 Watercolor Paper 
• watercolors
• sharpie
• Brush and water bowl
• brown oil pastel
• foam blender

Instructions to Lead Lesson:

Step 1:  Using sharpie, with freehand technique, have students draw long line branches.  Just as people, trees are not perfect…have students explore imperfections of the tree such as bent branches, even broken branches, crossed branches, etc.

Step 2:  Have students fill in the branches with lines of age and experience.  A few nods are fun to add too.

Step 3:  Color in tree with Brown Oil Pastel.  Color lightly and use blending foam to move color.

Step 4:  Now the fun begins using watercolors.   Suggest the students stick to the cool colors of night, cold and snow, or perhaps use the warm colors of the sun melting the sun and warming the soon to be spring air.  Try to encourage students to blend the colors together, not have too big of blocks of one particular color.  Like seen here...

Step 5:  When complete, students will appreciate the scape of a chilly wintery scene…or bringer days to come. 

Thank you!