A Garden for Sara: CTC Unit 6 Watercolor Tutorial

Day 2

Your Supplies are listed in your guide I have most pictured here... But I forgot scissors Doh!

The big paint brush is optional.

The tape is NOT optional today you will need it.

So the scissors get their own photo.

I think these are super old, cause I remember using them in first grade.

Tape down your paper

I do not have purple so I got out my ultramarine blue and red.
You will need about 2 pea sized blobs of the blue.
Do use your darker blue as it is a night time painting.

Don't forget to thin the paint paint with a bit of water before you work with it.

I mixed in a little blue at a time. This is not purple enough so I added more dark blue.

I'm looking at this saying to myself this is too brown, so I changed tactics.

Once I added some light blue I was happy with my color. If you aren't happy with your color, play around with it, add white, or a different red or a different blue. Add in other colors in small quantities. Start over if it goes way off into mud grey... unless you want mud grey :-)

Sweet Potato taping her paper.

If you think you will forget where to stop draw a light pencil mark 2/3 down the paper.

Now cut out Tiny!! pieces of tape.
I suggest you hold the scissors steady and move the tape to make the circles.
When I was done I thought my fireflies were too big. Tiny as in 1/4 of an inch tiny.

When placing the tape, think about how these will be bright white dots when you are done. They will bring movement to your painting. Try not to place them so they draw your eye off the page but rather curve them to draw your eye back to the center of your painting. Also think about where you want to put your tree, do you want fireflies in it or around it?

Now paint with the water.

Blot with a paper towel or a rag.

Paint the dark blue evenly, remember if the paper starts to pill stop because you are over working it.

Now load up your brush with purple and over lap the blue. Lay the purple down evenly.

Sweet Potato says "For fine detail work use your best lefty scissors."

Oh yeah! it is time to paint!

I want more fireflies!

Ok this is getting tiring.

Once you are done set your work aside. in a safe place to dry.

Don't forget to clean up!

Day 3

You only need a few items to finish this painting up.

Make sure your paper is dry, peel off the tape gently.

Do not remove the tape while the paper is wet, it will tear. If you are doing both days at the same time, wait till the paint has set. Once the paint has set but the paper isn't completely dry, you can speed things up with a hair dryer on low. Unless you live in TX or the desert then 10 minutes outside dries it quick!

Now that the tape is off, I have nice bright white dots.

I did not need this much yellow so just a smidgen will do.

Put a dot of yellow in the center, use your tooth pick to draw fine lines around it.

Paint in a tree as your fancy describes, see Unit One Tutorial

for more details on how to paint a tree.

Be careful make sure the yellow dots have dried before you paint over them.

A section on repairing my mistakes.

Oh no! Messy!
I misread the directions and thought my dot went outside the white.
I scraped the yellow off quick but it took some blue with it.

After it dried, I picked up a tad of blue from the top of the painting and dappled it in between the yellow.

If you make a mistake you can't stand, you can always cover it with your poetry.

This poem made me think of walks along the Maumee River with my grandparents. We used to take a jar and catch the fireflies and then let them go. (Because they were imported Japaneses fireflies brought over to replace the extinct ones.) I think this might have been a urban legend to make us let them go. There were willow trees along the river, so I painted a willow. I now want to add a river to this painting :-).