Friday, November 9, 2012

CTC Unit 13 Watercolor Tutorial

This is my finished painting, it looks better in real life. 
Day 2
 We could not find our pallet so in a pinch we just cover a plate with plastic wrap. 
 Look, so easy to clean up! unwrap and toss! 
 We did not need our BLUE paint although the instructions say we do. Please note the science book comes in super handy for the spider web bit. 
 Used up the very last of the blue tape so I was skimpy. 
 I used a nice amount of green I didn't want to have really light grass.
Can you see I'm adding a bit of water to it to loosen up the paint and make it flow. 
 Load up your brush. 
 Paint... 
 dip, wipe, wipe. 
 lighter... 
Dip wipe wipe 
 getting lighter.. 
 Getting lighter and lighter. 
 Let dry, and store in a safe place till tomorrow.  
 She did a great job! 
 Off she goes! 

Day 3 
Flip your paper 180 degrees So the top part is light and the bottom is the dark part. 
 Using paper towels or rags dab on some bushes...
 Lily followed the directions and put the bushes at the top... 
 Now the back of my paint brush was not effective in scraping off the paint, this time I grabbed a needle.
This worked really well at scraping away the paint. to reveal white paper underneath.


 Now use your flat brush. 
 Make grass stalks long and short. Use the side of your flat brush. 
Make lots and lots of them but do leave a space for your spider web. Remember if you put the spider web off to the side the painting, it becomes more interesting than putting it dead center. 
See I left a good spot for a spider to build its web...  
 Now add leaves to some of the "grass" stalks. 
 use different patterns, offset or side by side.
Here I just got creative and made wiggly stems and added leaves to it.  

 I used curved lines to create the umbrella shaped flowers. 
 Do use paint straight from the tube to be sure you cover up the green.
Add as many in as fits your whimsy.  
 Follow the diagram in the science book to draw your web.
If you use the side of your flat brush very very carefully you can make very thin lines. 
 Look how the line broke, that is ok! I'm not going to go back and fix it. When we look at a spiders web in real life do we really see each strand fully? or do they disappear? 
 Allowing the lines to break and be thick and thin, gives it a more ethereal effect. 
 I'm still following the base lines shown in the book. 
 Now add in the joining lines make sure they are straight don't curve them.
You will be tempted to curve them. It's an illusion don't fall for it! 
 I added in the bones of the web. 
 Then I filled it in with more strands. 
 All done!I really liked that, that was super fun! 
 Light dabbing with a mild upward stroke gave me the grass. 

 I decided I wanted white berries on my bushes.
If Sweet Potato can have lighting bolts I can have berries! 
 There we go all done! 

Close up of finished web. 

5 comments:

  1. Beautiful! Can't wait to do this! Can you use white paint rather than rub off paint with needle? My ds might rip the paper as he gets carried away with some aspects.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I always seem to rip the paper a bit. I think if you can get a fine white paint brush you could add in white lines. Another option is to prep the page before hand. On the top of the page on day one you could do some curved lines with a white crayon before you start to paint. The paint won't stick to the wax and you will have a similar effect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. just make sure you remember the page gets flipped top becomes bottom etc. So your curves go the right way!

      Delete
  3. I am really unsure what to do with the blue paint. The instructions say that we need blue but it doesn't specify what to do with blue?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You want to mix the blue in with the green to get a darker green for the bushes.

      Delete