Amateur Watercolor Artists

I believe I've mentioned before that my oldest daughter is really good at drawing. She is always drawing on something even while she's in the middle of another task. Two years ago she enrolled in a watercolor class and made two paintings. One was an owl in a tree and the other was of a historical building in our city.





With school starting up again, I wanted to encourage her to keep up with her watercolor painting for art class. On Friday's we concentrate most of our school time on art. This Friday she did this painting of a rowboat.



This afternoon, I asked her to show me how to paint with watercolors. I have been painting with acrylics for years and years, and I've also tried painting with oils, but I had never tried watercolor. I also thought it would keep her interested in watercolors if she had a "student".

I froze up with her first instruction - "Draw a basket of fruit!" I have no talent in drawing, so I talked her into drawing for me. She decided since she had to do the drawing that she would cut it down to one apple, and made a sketch for me as well as one for herself and her little sister. Then she give us directions on mixing the colors for lights as well as shadow colors.





Here's Hannah's finished painting.


This one is her little sister's.

This one is mine. I had to have her help me pick the background color. Instead of going with my instincts, I chose a color using the color wheel and messed up :( You can see where I started with a green near the bottom and had to switch to blue. The green was too close in value to the yellow apple and the apple just faded into the background.


Painting with watercolors is going to take a lot of practice for me. It's an entirely different technique than what I use with acrylics or oils. It's good to learn something new and lots of fun when learning from your kids.


Comments

Susan Loftin said…
Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

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