Watercolor Insects

Here is a fun watercolor project for primaries k-3

I got these new liquid watercolors from Sargent that are my favorite EVER!!! They are extremely bright and mix very well on even the cheapest watercolor paper. I have also been very pleased with the Canson watercolor paper because it is good quality and resonably priced

We have been studying the color wheel and the students have mastered primary, seondary and intermediate colors. For this project we talked about warm and cool colors

the first day i let the kids experimant with mixing the liquid watercolors wet on wet to let the water mix the colors and use very little brush to paper action. they could also spirnkle water drops on them to see white spots form. We tried to keep complimentary colors away from each other so they didn't get muddy.

If their watercolors were dry they could add details on top for layering like these eyes and some made flowers and butterflies

Each student was to pick an insect and draw it nie and big on their paper. then draw a cirle under it. this introduced overlapping to kindergarten when the insect's wings overlapped the circle. Then we looked at examples of close up photos to see how things run off the edge or get cut off. the petals had to run off the edge of the paper.

After the student finished the drawing they could add dots on the flower center, and lines on the petals with oil pastels

Then the tables were divided into warm color tables and cool color tables. Students had to paint only the INSECT and the SKY this class period using only warm or cool colors

Here is a first day example using only warm colors, wet on wet. They had to paint the whole thing with water first, then paint the edged with two colors and just let them run together in the middle so the middle is a little lighter value

Here is the example of the first day with cool colors only

The second day they switch tables and finsih by painting the flower with the opposite set of colors. The students have done a great job so far and are quite beautiful! These watercolors are fun and get the kids very excited with their brightness and contrast!