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I knew I wanted to paint with The Girl soon, and given that she’s getting pretty tired of writing about the things we study together and that algae didn’t seem as engrossing to her as mushrooms — I thought a painting would be the perfect recall for our study of algae. It also really lends itself to wet-on-wet painting.

When I first started teaching, painting was the most intimidating class for me. I always found myself celebrating a bit when it got cancelled because of a snow day or an assembly. By the end of my teaching years, though, I really loved it and wished for more painting time.

Wet on wet watercolor can be an incredibly forgiving medium, if you choose the right subject. It is so difficult to render fine details, that the painter is forced to leave things a bit to the imagination. This is what makes it perfect for the young child. Children are fantastic at depicting the gesture of something, but things tend to fall apart when they try to put in the details. I’ve seen so many children happy with their drawings in the broad gesture stage, but then get completely frustrated when they focus on details. This is one of the reasons why larger drawing tools are so much better for young children.

There is an art, however, to creating a wet-on-wet watercolor. I always start with a veil of color over the entire page. This helps overcome the austerity of a blank page in a safe, harmless manner. Today we started with ultra-marine blue — starting darker at the bottom and sweeping left to right until we were about 3/4 of the way up the page. Then we grabbed a touch of yellow and started at the top, fading down to white where it met the blue. We then used yellow to start adding algae plants to the bottom of the water. I could see that brush technique was something we needed to work on, so we talked about how to use the brush to create what you want. I was thinking about introducing her to a smaller brush — now that The Girl is in fifth grade a little more detail is appropriate — but I would like to work with her brush technique a little more before doing that.

Today we stuck with the three primary colors — Stockmar’s lemon yellow, ultra-marine blue and crimson. Eventually we’ll add prussian blue, gold and my favorite, red-violet. It’s amazing, though, how much you can create with just these three colors. Many teachers recommend that you soak the paper to moisten it before painting. Though you certainly can, it is not really necessary. Today I just wet down the paper under the faucet (I don’t have the right size sink) on both sides and lay it down on the table. I prefer to use painting boards so I can move the paintings after they’re finished, but I didn’t have any. I just made sure that painting was last on our lesson plan, so it was fine.

In the end, I think we were both pleased with what we came up with.

mine

The Girl's