For our first project in our painting unit, I wanted to start out with something simple and fun, so we created abstract expressionism watercolor paintings. The students had a blast with these paintings, and I think it shows!
We started off by using Kandinsky as our bell ringer artist to talk about abstract expressionism and emotion in an artwork.
Then, we took two days in our sketchbooks to learn 12 different watercolor techniques. Students masked off 12 squares in the textbook and I walked them through the techniques one at a time. Students then carefully peeled off their masking tape and labeled each square with the technique, writing a brief description as to how to do the technique as well.
The techniques we covered were:
Wet on wet wash
Wet on dry way
Graded wash
Salt
Lifting Off
Rubbing Alcohol
Tissue paper
Color/Water Dropping
Plastic wrap
Wax resist
Dry Brush
Glaze
Here are some of their finished products. The requirements of the project were that students had to use color, line and shape to create an emotion or feeling. They had to use at least five of the different watercolor techniques in their paintings, and they could not paint something representational. Students painted three different paintings and then choose the one they felt showed the most emotion to mat and hand in.
These two are mine.
