Watercolor For Unit 1 CTC

So I thought I'd make a tutorial for how you can paint the Poetry/Art project for Unit One. 

Things you will need:

A wide brush

A skinny brush.

Water
Yellow paint

Brown paint
A pea size amount of each should work just fine.

3X5 card of poetry verse

Water

Newspaper to protect surfaces

Tooth pick (missing from supply shots) 

Art board (optional, helps keep art flat and neat.)

Masking tape (optional, helps keep art flat and neat.) 

Day 1

Do poetry verse

Day 2

Gather your supplies and lay down newspaper. 

Tape paper to the board.

Taping the paper allows it to have a nice clean edge and keeps it from curling.

This is optional but I recommend it, as it makes them much neater to store.

 Just a pea size is enough paint!

 Wet and wipe your bush then load it up with all the paint. 

Draw your brush across the top of the paper. 

See nice bright yellow!  

Dip brush, wipe on side of cup 2x and do it again.  

 And yet again. 

Keep dipping, wiping and drawing your brush across the paper. 

See how the yellow is gradually getting lighter and lighter.  

All done now set aside and let it dry. 

Day 3

Ok I forgot we need a tooth pick, so add that to this bunch of supplies.
Note how nice and flat my painting is. 

 Here again you only need a small amount of paint. A little goes along way. 
I washed off half that paint at the end so even that small amount was to much. 

  Here I have added 3-4 drops of water from my brush into the paint and I'm mixing it to make it smooth. 

Draw the trunk don't worry if its not big enough now, you can always make it bigger later. 

 Added branches. 

 I found I had to stop here and use the toothpick to draw the bark.
It is very very dry here in TX!
The paint was drying so fast.
So keep an eye on the trunk and once it starts to set,
grab that toothpick and scratch in some bark. 

 I added in branches as my fancy prescribed. 

Look here I went over the first branch I put in. Trees do this, so its ok to overlap your branches.
No seriously go look at a tree... I'll wait... Did you look?
Tree branches over lap and under lap and go every which way, so anywhere you want to put one go ahead put one.  

 Oh no! The top is not dry, but I want to paint on the other side. See how I stuck my pinkie down on a dry part of the painting to steady my hand. (Only do this if your finger is CLEAN!). 

So you don't think you can paint a leaf? On scrap paper, see what happens if you just gently press your brush to paper. If you like the results you can easily make a leaf this way.  Himm looks like a Ginko leaf. But I don't want a Ginko leaf, I think I'll paint my own.

 Painted my own... Now let dry. 

Day 4

 Add your poetry verse and your all ready to frame it... Ok it's not this weeks verse its unit 2's but it saved me from having to write it all out.  :-) Note how flat the painting is. 

Here is Little Miss Sunshine's painting. See how curled it is and not as nice looking.
If we had taped down the edges, it would be neater.
Even curled up I think it is FABULOUS! 

I'd like to thank Little Miss Sunshine for being my photographer today! She does great work!