What's Going on in the Classroom: Watercolor Painting Project

I'm soooo glad we have moved back into a two-dimensional media! This quarter students will be exploring painting and some 2-D mixed media as well as printmaking and computer graphics. We've started off with watercolor painting. As we enter the second half of the year, students are really striking out with their own voice and ideas. So for this painting, instead of telling students what their subject matter should be, we are focusing on their composition or how they arrange that subject matter. But before we got into any of that, we practice and played around with different watercolor techniques. Students learned how to do a watercolor wash and some different textures with salt and straws, etc.. then they tried their hand at painting realistically with some fruit as their inspiration.

Now students are beginning their compositions. The chose any subject matter they wanted, however they had to include one distinct focal point. Students had to place that focal point on their paper according to the Rule of Thirds. Then they were required to incorporate a watercolor wash and a texture technique somewhere in their work. Here are a few that are just getting starting. More finished pieces to come!