Dream Painters: watercolour pencil

Showing posts with label watercolour pencil. Show all posts

"Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2" Animal Morphs in Watercolour Pencil

Talia's 'Candy Swane'

Inspired by the soon to be released Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2, we've stretched our imaginations to morph our favourite foods with animals to create altogether new creatures.

The imagination of my students is always a delight and an inspiration! Well done everyone!

How Much Can A Koala Bear?

After a guided drawing lesson to draw our koala, we used water colour pencil, being sure to use short broken lines drawn in the same direction that the fur grows, to create a furry look for our koalas. We were also careful to leave patches of white fur on the chest and ears to create contrast.

Students had a completely free range with colour - some went with natural greys, browns and black while others really lashed out! Thanks to Emma and Estelle for sharing their very individual Koala pictures here!

We used the same broken line technique to apply colour to the background, referring to the colour wheel to select colours that we knew would blend well together. Finally we brushed over all our line work with fine brushes and clean water. We were careful to apply our brushwork in the same direction that we drew our lines to dissolve the colour into watercolour while retaining the line work which gives the koala his furry appearance.

In A Parallel World.....

Students started with an action photo of themselves standing in front of a blank wall.

Their challenge was to create a shadow of themselves in a parallel world - a bit like Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland or the Narnia books. This world exists side by side with ours, and only needs a window or door to step from one into the other.

Like Peter Pan, their shadow can have a life of it's own. Instead of merely copying their real-life body, it should express something important about who they are - perhaps something they love to do like art, music or sport. It might even be symbolic - a lion, a playful rabbit, a dragon!

Finally, we created the background on the wall with watercolour pencil, imagining it as a window into a parallel world.

This project was inspired by this wonderful lesson which I found at Mini Matisse well over a year ago, and have had in mind ever since. It's a perfect project to finish the term, with loads of opportunity for students to stretch their imaginations!

This is our last lesson this term - our 2 week winter break starts now. Happy holidays!!

Dali Elephants

Ziva G (Yr 1)

At the end of last year I took a few weeks off and had a wonderful holiday traveling around Spain. I promised the kids that I'd come home with lots of great ideas for our art class ......

After looking at 'The Elephants' by Spanish Surrealist artist Salvidor Dali we drew our own elephants (and other creatures!) in the style of Dali, with bodies positioned high in the page and balanced on impossibly spindly legs.

'The Elephants' Salvidor Dali 1948

We also found inspiration in this little sculpture that I found in Barcelona - I just love it!

After outlining our drawings with black sharpie markers, and a discussion about how to choose colors that will blend well together (colors close to each other on the color wheel) we colored the entire page with thickly applied watercolor pencil. Then we took them outside to spritz them with water.
Holding them up by the top corners, we let the pencil/paint blend and run together in rivulets. When we were happy with the effect we then laid them flat to dry.

I love the way the colors become so brilliant with the water application, and the way the colors run and blend is so spontaneous and unpredictable.

My Ultimate Holiday!

The last lesson before the holidays, so a holiday themed picture seemed appropriate. I’d previously taken photos of the kids, which I photo-shopped to ink-sketch effect and to take out the background. The kids drew their idea of their ultimate holiday destination in the background (free drawing with fine black marker, no erasers allowed!) and colored with water-color pencil leaving their faces black and white. Aren’t they effective? We had everywhere from Paris to the Moon, underwater cities and Lollyland!