These vibrant little ladybugs were done my my 7-8 year old age group. Cute kids painting cute bugs. Doesn't get much better than that.
I had done a negative space painting project with my adult class the week before and was still totally inspired by this very cool technique. Since I was focussing on watercoloring with my little class, I decided to give negative space painting a go with this age group too. However, since the technique is conceptually complicated (as vouched by my adults), I kept this kids version very simple. So, our focus was on the lady bug, and we just added a few negative space leaves here and there.
Process
Ladybug:
For individuality, students chose ladybug to paint from an array of visuals I had on offer (both photos and paintings of ladybugs in different positions and from different angles. They chose their bug, and drew it large on watercolor paper. I helped them through this step, demonstrating on the whiteboard how I would begin drawing a ladybug: where to center it, how to determine the size (must be large), where to start drawing, etc.
I showed them how to start with the basic shape, so the body, Then add the detail, so the front part (head) and the legs. These details had to be drawn to scale, so the head should not be huge or tiny compared to the body, legs should not be too long or too thick, etc.... keeping all our proportions correct gives us a more realistic and believable bug. They drew their bugs in pencil.
Leaves:
Ladybugs had to be in their habitat and not floating in space. Students had to figure out how and where to place their bugs on leaves or grass blades. Visuals helped them envision this and draw from observation. A main leaf or grass blade was drawn in pencil.
Negative space painting
Step 1: We painted our entire paper (but not the bug) in a light wash of green-yellow. We went over our leaf, but we could still see the pencil lines, because we used little pigment and lots of water (a "wash").
Step 2. We drew in another leaf or a few blades of grass. We painted over these in a darker wash of green (but painted AROUND our first leaf). Now we have a light green-yellow leaf offset by the darker background.
Step 3. We painted around ALL our leaves in an even darker wash of green (a bit of ultramarine blue darkens in up nicely). We now have the light green-yellow leaf, and our medium green leaves which are offset by our darker shade of green.
This is negative space painting in a nutshell.... and it was indeed difficult for the kids to get. One student could not resist painting OVER his leaves with each additional coat of color, instead of AROUND them.
For those who DO get it quickly, you could have them do even a third layer by drawing a third round of leaves, and painting around all leaves in a darker shade (nice extension). You can see a few of my kids did that (see the darker leaves?)
On to the lady bug. The body was done wet-on-wet, with more pigment on the outer edge and less at the center. Students were encouraged to keep little spots of unpainted white paper on the body, for the highlight. We know we can't get highlights back very easily with watercolor. The rule is start light, go darker gradually. We looked at our visuals to find the darker parts of our bug's red body, and added more pigment to these areas (along the outer edge, or the underbody). Heads were done in black (also with thought to white areas and highlights, like the white areas near the eyes and the grayer tones). Tiny liner brushes were used to create legs and antennas (emphasis on tiny and skinny).
Spots were done in a small round brush.
We had taped down our borders (a must for watercolor, especially when the results may be a bit messy), and it framed these little bugs in their negative space habitat neatly and crisply.
