CTC Watercolor Tutorial Unit 16

A Dust of Snow. 

Here is what our finished painting should look like or at least my version of it. :-)

Use lots of paint and lots of salt. Don't make my mistakes ;-)

Day 2

 Today I shifted the paper length wise. I thought It would be fun to do it the tall way.
Tall or long  either way works for this painting. 

 Tape down your paper if you want to have a flat painting. 

 Use a larger amount of blue, than shown,
Little Miss Sunshine and Sweet Potato used more and got much better results. 

I decided to make a helper to know where my light is coming from, this is my sun.

I posted it on my upper left hand corner of my work space. 

 Draw your hill. 

 Mix your paint with a bit of water. 

 Paint creating a gradient as you go down. Feel free to use lots of paint and work quickly
As it is still very dry here in Texas, my paint of course started to dry out to early. 

 So I cheated a bit and sprinkled the salt on the snow section. You should use more blue paint than I did and make it nicely wet. (but not super wet). 

Wet down the brown and paint in the tree and the shadows.  

painting...  

 I love painting leafless trees. 

 You can always go look at a tree to see how the branches come together. 

 Feel free to be simpler here as you will have to draw in a background. 

 Little details like branches that cross and twigs give your tree movement and realism. 

 I went back and darkened the side of the tree that is opposite the sun I made.
This little bit of shadowing gives depth to your branches. 

 Here is a close up of the dry salt on the page. 

 Here goes the kiddos. 

 As an accommodation for Sweet Potato I let her draw her tree before she painted it.
Feel free to give your kids that struggle this kind of help so they can be happy with the final result.
Many successes will build confidence, she also drew the tree, I didn't "draw it for her"
(She erased a bit too). 

 Sweet Potato had the best result in the end. As you can see she was heavy handed with the salt. She was also working slowly so we dumped salt while the paint was still wet. 

She blew the extra salt off where the tree went. 

 Little Miss Sunshine just worked along and dashed salt at the end. 

 Shes is on her way to a masterpiece! 

Day 3 

 Over a sink or a trash can carefully brush the salt off your painting. 

 Close up of the salt on my lightly painted lightly salted version. 

I'd say a light dusting of powdered snow. 

 Here is a close up of the thickly painted heavy handed salted version.  

This looks like a snow drift of soft fluffy flakes! 

 

You will need a decent bit of white, and purple,

if like us you do not have purple use a bit of red and blue.  

Notice how I pulled the paint way from the main color as I mixed up the purple. 

then took a tinsy bit and started a new spot on my pallet. 

Then I pulled the white into that tiny spot of purple, and blended well. Mix up quiet a bit of this color and do not over color the background, look at Little Miss Sunshines painting to see how a little bit of purple goes a very long way!  

 Carefully outline your tree, this is a great opportunity to thin down lines that you are dissatisfied with and think are too thick. but be careful you don't want to paint over your tree or it will disappear. 

 So I worked on the right side first,(cause I'm right handed). 

 Now tha tI have most of the right side done I'm going to turn my paper.
Since we are just filling in the background we can... 

 I turned my painting upside down  to make it easier for me to get in the tree.
This way my hand can rest on dry paper. 

 Think about it I wouldn't want to hold my brush like this the whole time above wet paint. 

 By flipping the art I can work wet to dry and keep my hand from smudging wet paint. 

Once I outlined my tree I went back and filled in with the larger brush. 

 Here is Sweet Potatoes Masterpiece. 

 here is Little Miss Sunshine's Note how Dark her background got she used more than a smidgen of purple. She also Re-painted once it was even darker!  

Here is my finished work... which I thought I had lost Gasp! 

but instead discovered my Hubby liked it so much he took it! 

He let me have it long enough to take a photo then confiscated it again.