Art at Hosmer: Fall Leaves Watercolor Resist

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Fall Leaves Watercolor Resist

In keeping with the fall season, 1st grade artists looked at leaves and noticed that the green leaves change to red, orange and yellow when it becomes fall. We noticed that these are all warm colors. We began by looking at real leaves, as well as photographs of leaves, that have changed color during the fall.
We noticed that some leaves had more than one color.

Students drew several large leaves on their paper, using oil pastels, looking closely at the examples of leaves and drawing them from observation. We practiced close looking and noticed the bumpy edges of many of the leaves and the lines or veins inside.

Then we painted our leaf drawings using watercolor paint in warm colors -- red, orange and yellow. The oil pastel lines of the leaves show through the watercolor paint, which demonstrates resist, an effect students learned about last year in kindergarten.

Students also learned about a watercolor technique called wet-on-wet, which means the paper is wet before adding more wet paint on top. Students tried painting the paper with water first and then dropping or painting with watercolor on top, or painting a wash of one color and adding other colors on top.

The watercolor blooms or spreads because the paper is already wet which creates a blurry effect. Students enjoyed experimenting with this technique, and many found its effect "magical"! We had to bring our artwork to the drying rack very carefully to make sure the paint stayed inside our leaves.

The following class, we added some lines with white oil pastel to the background and then painted the background with cool colors of watercolor paint. Students experimented with wet-on-wet and also learned about another watercolor technique: using salt sprinkled on top of the wet paint. The salt absorbs the color from the paint, creating a white spot underneath as it dries and making a interesting texture.

Students enjoyed combining some of the watercolor techniques they learned about during this project. After our artwork had dried, the salt was brushed off and students were excited to see the effects of the salt, as well as the wet-on-wet. Below are examples of our warm and cool color fall leaves: