Watercolor Landscapes

Watercolor Landscapes
For this project I was inspired by the beautiful painting below by Mr. E on his awesome blog..check it out http://artwithmre.blogspot.com/2009/01/some-of-my-grad-school-art-work-from.html I LOVE LOVE the earth tones, texture, and patterns

We used the Sargent liquid watercolor paints

-Students begin with a drawing of three large rocks at the bottom for the foreground

-then they draw a horizontal line for a lake and two large rock/mountains on either side of the lake

-then about 4-5 medium size middleground mountains

-then some tiny mountains at the top for the background

painting:

-each mountain has must have either green+color of choice or brown+color of choice to create earth tones

-choose mountains that don't touch so they don't run together

-start by painting a mountain with water (for wet on wet) paint a dark line of green/brown add a line of color of choice on top of green/brown all around the edge only, rinse brush and fill in the middle with more water blending the edges into the middle keeping the edges dark and the middle light and letting the colors blend naturally from the water.

-students can add salt while its wet to add texture

-Next week continue with mountains

The next week students use the bright colors of the sunset from yellow to orange and use magenta to merge the warm colors to cool colors, mx magenta with blue to make beautiful violet. My students got to the second day and their mountains were BEAUTIFUL!! but I suddenly went on maternity leave unexpectedly due to preterm labor and never got to finish. I'm not sure how they turned out with the sub :-( so I don't have any student work photos.

what I would do to finish is create different patterns on the mountains and or trees like the painting by Mr. E