This is one of my favorite all-time lessons and resulted in stunning finished artwork. All my classes and age levels, from four years old to adult, make these with success.
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| Catherine Rayner's illustration |
Our inspiration came from the children's book illustrator, Catherine Rayner, who creates magical watercolor illustrations of animals. We looked at the rabbit in her book Bernard's Ears.
We only used dirty, neutral colors, which were already on the 'dirty' side our palette, or which we mixed ourselves in our pallets by combining many colors, adding a smidgen of black to our colors, or just experimenting with color mixing. The goal was to have neutrals and earthy tones. We used plenty of dirty water too as a light value option! We got some lovely browns, grays, and all the neutral VALUES in between.
To begin we had a quick lesson in watercolor techniques. We tried wet on wet, creating sharp lines, softening edges, pulling paint and blending color, keeping paint translucent, leaving white spaces, starting light and going darker, using dirty water as a light value.
Then we began our rabbit drawing by looking closely at Rayner's illustration and breaking down her lines and shapes, and mapping our the location of all the rabbit's features (drawing from observation skill-builder!). We used pencils and students were encouraged to draw VERY lightly with their pencils so we don't see the pencil marks at the end (important with watercolor). Next, mouth and nose were defined with a black permanent pen, and e
yes were drawn and pupils filled in.  |
| The 'dirty' side of our palette has the BEST colors |
Next we started painting by using the watercolor techniques we had learned. We started with our lightest values first (white, or barely there grays which we achieved by using no color, only dirty water). Then we painted the next lightest color, and the next, and so on until we got to our darkest value. We used the most beautiful earthy tones.
We were especially mindful of keeping white areas paint-free, since we know you can't get these back with watercolor. Keeping the rabbit open and airy, with plenty of space and light areas, gives them more character, texture and interest.
For our background we mixed a very light grey with black and tons of water. Using the wet on wet technique, we worked section by section and painted our background grey, leaving a bit of space between our rabbit and our background, so as not bleed colors.
Lastly, once dry, we used a fine-point black permanent pen to add a subtle outline to our rabbit's ears, face and body, being careful not to trace the whole bunny, but instead, we used a broken line to keep the look open and airy.
These turned out amazingly!
Watercolor is tricky, but well worth the effort. I am SO proud of these bunnies!
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| Kids 6-9 |
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| Kids 7-13 |
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| Little class (4-6) |
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| Adult class |
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| Anastazia, 6 |
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| Sif, 7 |
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| Marko, 11 |
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| Teacher sample |