 |
| Teacher Sample |
I decided to try out a version in watercolor with my 7-8 year olds.
I knew they would enjoy the 'alternative' painting tool (credit card!) and other tricks, like masking trees with masking tape and painting with a sea sponge.
Indeed, they enjoyed all the steps involved, but I found that our overall results were undeveloped and somewhat bland. This is when I decided to have them work on these pieces another day and add more detail, vibrancy and contrast with mixed media.
Day 1
Masking trees
Students pasted 1-2 large strips of masking tape on their papers, from the center of their page going off the top of the page. These are the large trees in the front.
Students pasted 1-2 medium strips of masking tape, with the bases starting a tiny bit higher than the first strips. These are the mid ground trees.
Students pasted 2 thin strips of masking tape, with bases slightly higher than the middle strips. These are the tress furthest back in the distance. Doing these steps creates a sense of depth.
Sky
Students painted their sky using a sea sponge and lightly dabbing blues and purples all around. The sponge should be only very slightly moist, and not too wet, so the paint is not too thin or watery. This way the sponge reveals its texture and the paint is more vibrant. This is dried.
Tree
Masking tape is removed, starting with the thin, back trees first. These back trees are painted with grey paint (blue plus brown). Credit cards (which I had cut down into smaller strips) are used to scrape the paint on our trees. Simply line the edge of the credit card up with the edge of our tree, and scrape it midway across the trunk. Repeat all the way up, and again on the other side of the trunk. Students were encouraged to go for variety and achieve random bark effect, for a more natural look.
Tape is removed from the middle trees, and steps are repeated.
Tape is removed from the front trees, and steps are again repeated.
I encouraged kids to make their paint darkest for the front trees, (so adding a touch of black) for atmospheric perspective, and to offset these from the back trees.
*Some students had a hard time scraping the paint, and keeping it neat. I reinforced the importance of keeping the credit card lined up RIGHT on the contour line of the tree, not short of it or outside of it. *Some students were also too systematic with their scarping, and they created what looked almost like a ladder (perfectly equal applications of paint, and not natural-looking bark). I encouraged working in some more natural looking marks to break up the 'perfect' bark.
*I found having students use their credit card edge to dab paint along the full contour line of their trees made for a more pleasing appearance and made it easier to distinguish one tree from the others.
For a video on this technique visit here.
Foreground
Students use a flat brush and paint tree shadows using a light wash of blue-grey color (we mixed blue with brown to get our gray). Shadows are just painted in a diagonal line outwards from the base of the trees.
Blue-grey paint is dabbed around the base of trees, to give them some grounding.
Paint is lightly dabbed here and there to create the illusion of snowy mounds, and hilly shadows, but we left lots of space paint-free (white) for the snowy look.
This is what we completed in day one, but I knew we needed a pop of color and some emphasis to bring it all together.
Day 2
Students were given red, orange and yellow gouache paint (you could use acrylic). They painted small leaves using a medium round brush (just dabbing the paint on) in both bottom corners of their papers and reaching up the sides a bit. They had to think about variety (in color and in size).
Blue-black paint was used to dab smaller leaves at the bottom-center of their paper, and overlapping into the red and orange leaves a bit. Again, leaves should be in various sizes, and going in different directions (movement and variety).
These leaves should create the illusion of fall leaves at the foreground, growing up into our field of vision.
Cardinals
Students drew 1-2 cardinal birds in pencil on small squares of mixed media paper. Birds must be small, to fit to scale with our trees, so giving them pre-cut small squares of paper ensures that birds are drawn the correct size. Students looked at many drawings and pictures of cardinals and drew from observation. Birds were outlined in thin fine liner permanent marker and colored in marker. Red, with a darker red for shadows, and orange for the beak.
These were carefully cut out and pasted on their foreground trees in a visually pleasing manner.
This project took two 90 minute classes. Had we had more time, I would have had the kids sprinkle some snow on their painting with a toothbrush, using white gouache or acrylic paint. Two of my students did manage the time to do this, but the others did not.
This was a fun wintery project with many techniques and media.
 |
| Aditri 8 |
 |
| Mathilda 7 |
 |
| Yiming 7 |
 |
| Daniel 8 |
 |
| Mei Mei 8 |
 |
| Rune 7 |
 |
| Class collage |