Fall Into This Idea for Art (Part 2)

Posted by Kristina | 0 comments

Last time I wrote, I encouraged you, as a family, to try some different watercolour methods (like the salt, plastic wrap or sponge techniques) and make predictions about what the results might be. I hope you took some time to toy with textures!

Now I will talk about painting fruits and vegetables. I suggested that you set up a display of one to three fruits or vegetables and begin your project by making a rough sketch of them. Practice adding shading and depth if you have not yet, thinking about the 7 laws of perspective, but save one sketch that is mainly the outlines, like this:

I trust you can see where I roughly outlined a squash, only putting down lines for areas I am going to shade. The idea is to delineate darker and lighter areas, keeping the actual painting fairly simple. Our goal is to experiment with shading and painting with watercolour in general, not making a masterpiece (though you might be pleasantly surprised with your results!).

What you need: (many of these items were used in Part 1)

Watercolour paper, watercolours, water for rinsing brushes, paper towel to blot with, brushes, assorted seasonal gourds, fruits and vegetables, pencil, tape, imagination

To reiterate, while watercolour paper is, obviously, ideal, you can experiment with different sorts of papers, keeping in mind that watercolour paper will allow for the best absorption of the colour. If you do not have a watercolour set (no, you do not need to run out and purchase the most expensive tubes of watercolour paints), the “cheap” dollar store watercolour paint sets are perfectly fine for playing with colour.

Teach your child(ren) about the difference between value or tone, in colour. Simply put, it is how light or dark a colour really is. Help them to understand and see that by adding water to the paint, you make it lighter in value (tone). A great lesson for this is to take one colour, like the blue, and try to make a value scale, using nine different values, starting with the lightest and ending with the darkest. The darkest value will be created with the paint straight out of the tube, no water added. You will likely have to do this exercise a few times before you are happy with the results, but it makes a valuable (groan) statement!

Now, for the painting:

To make a painting with realistic colours, first wet your whole drawing with water, lightly, leaving any sections you think should be highlighted untouched by the water. They will stay the white of the paper, receiving no paint. Choosing the lightest shade of colour you intend to paint with, colour the rest of the fruits. Without rinsing your brush, add a different colour, such as red over yellow or green, green over blue or purple. Think about the true colours of the vegetables or fruits you have drawn, and stick to those colours. Remember what the combinations of colours will produce (red over yellow will make orange, red over blue will make a purple, etc.) when layering them.

If you would like, instead, to experiment further with values (tones), then focus on hightlighting and shading, using the value chart you created earlier, selecting values only (meaning one colour in various tones) to paint your fruits and vegetables with.

Here’s to a happy new year of applying art!

Kristina is a happily married wife in her eleventh year of homeschooling the flybytheseatofyourpants method. So far her two boys seem intelligible and relatively unscathed. She is an intern Educational Therapist with NILD and in her spare time loves to scrapbook, paint, make linoprints and write novel study guides. In your spare time, check out her blog On Fire at: www.kristinacamp.blogspot.com