Art Project

For the past couple of years, my far-away cousin and I have been trading art projects. So fun! Until today, I was sending the project ideas by email with attachments, but sharing by blog will be even easier, and I won't have to limit my attachments! So, here it is, sweetie:

Freestyle watercolor

Supplies
You can get all of these supplies at Michaels, and most craft stores. I'll tell you what I use in case you're curious, but I'd recommend buying whatever's on sale. :) A good online art supplies store is Cheap Joe's Art Stuff.

• Plastic watercolor palette
• Watercolor paints (I like Winsor & Newton's Cotman watercolors from Michaels, but any will do. You can also get packs of watercolor paints, which are great)
• Big watercolor brush
• Bowl for water. I just use a recycled plastic tub from yogurt or cottage cheese!
• Ruler
• Watercolor paper. I use Aquarelle Arches from France, but Strathmore's really good too, and less expensive.
• Board to tape the paper to (watercolor paper will start buckling when wet, so you need to tape it down). Sometimes I just tape it to the cardboard back of my watercolor pad if it's sturdy enough, but they also sell boards made for artists.
• Masking tape

Prep

Get a medium sized piece of watercolor paper. If you only have large paper, just cut it in half using a ruler and scissors.

Draw a half-inch border around the paper, like the photo below. That way, instead of painting to the edge of your paper, you'll stop around this border, so that you won't lose your painting if you decide to frame it.

Next, use four pieces of masking tape to tape the paper's sides to the board:

Okay, now just fill up your water bowl, grab you watercolor palette, paints, and big watercolor brush, and you're set! I usually cover my table with a vinyl tablecloth for when I spill water and paint.

Here is my watercolor palette - it's a mess, and I love it that way. The result of years and years of use.

Now, use your big brush to slop water all over your watercolor paper, covering every inch within that border you drew.

Next, rub your wet brush on a paint color that you really like. I picked Cerulean Blue, which is a sky blue. Now, dab the brush in a few places on your paper. You're not going to cover the paper in one color, since we'll be adding a lot of different colors to see how they spread and what shapes they make.

With each new color you add, be sure to smoosh your brush around in the water bowl to get rid of the paint from the last color (unless you actually want to blend the two together).

Here's what I ended up doing. I had absolutely no plan, just kept adding colors I liked in different areas. I'll tell you what colors I used, in case there are some you really like that you want to get.

Cerulean Blue (a light, sky blue)

Black* and Naples Yellow (a pale yellow). Look at how the paint is spreading and merging.

Opera (deep pink)

Burnt Umber (brown)

Cobalt Blue (deep blue)

The paint is already doing neat things! The pink and blue look like a waterfall as paint spreads on the wet paper...

And in a place where a drop of clear water fell from my brush on the paper, it looks like a firework or sea urchin.

I'm still adding paint, more of the black, yellow, and brown, plus a few dots of red (Scarlet Lake) on the pink. Again, no plan, just having fun!

All of a sudden I had the urge to add tons of red, having no clue if it would look good or not. One thing's for sure - very fun!

Here is the end result, after it was all dry (You can use a blow drier to hurry it up, by the way.) You never know what watercolor's going to do when it dries. It can look totally different than it did when wet!

Wow, so different! 

You can even see the sharp edges on the top and bottom where I accidentally missed when wetting the paper. Cool!

When I'm planning a painting, I usually decide on a few colors I want to feature. But in this case, the idea is to just have fun and use whatever colors strike you. This painting actually looks a lot like my palette - a joyful mess. :)

That long, diagonal splotch in the middle is where water pooled. Usually I get the edge of a paper towel and soak it up, but I wanted to see what would happen. Kind of looks like a solar system.

Our next project will be similar, but we're going to add even more imagination to it. Have fun giving this a try! This should help you learn more about how watercolors act, which is interesting and always surprising.



*I made black by blending blue and brown, specifically Cobalt Blue and Burnt Umber from my Windsor Newton watercolors.