LESSON PLANS SUMMER 2022 (1st half) lesson 5 - a recap of lesson 4!

In our last lesson we used both wet-into-wet watercolour and watercolour directly onto the dry page. We were studying a small jam jar with a simple bunch of flowers. It was important that the jar was only half full with water as we were looking closely at the effect the water had on the stems as they passed through the surface. In this lesson many of my students are choosing to follow the process again for re-affirmation of the way it works. I'm also giving them the option of mixing their media, they can add any medium they like to the process. Here I'm showing a selection of some of the work from last week. Everyone came out with something lovely and learned from the process.

Summer term, 1st half 2022. Lesson 5 – Flowers in a jam jar.

A re-cap with loose and lovely watercolour (option to add another medium, to work with mixed media).

· Some of you will want to try last lesson’s process again – you’re well primed!

· Set up a jam jar of simple flowers and just half fill the jar with water.

· Wet the top half of your page and work into the wet area with the colours of your flowers (the paint will run).

· Paint into the dry half with a more neutral colour – Put the paint down to reveal the lighter places of your jam jar (i.e. leave the light areas the white of your page).

· The wet top half of your page is still wet enough to paint more colours into and allow them to flow. Paint lots more colour into it.

· When the first layer of the bottom half of your page is dry enough, put a new layer of information on top. Look closely at the stems and what happens to them at the surface of the water. Effectively, you’re not painting the jar, you’re painting the effect that the jar has on the water and then the effect the water has on the stems.

· One last go with the wet-into-wet before you dry the whole thing and bring some moments of focus to the top half of your page, particularly by finding some in-between shapes.

· You’re welcome to work with a negotiating medium (white paint, wax resist, gouache, oil or soft pastels etc.) which will allow you to find any lost white or light places and to keep your work ‘in flux’ as you negotiate your way to its finish.

Next lesson after 2week half term break: Bring drawing things, pencils, eraser, good sketch book/paper and over the two week break, look for a landscape image which shows clearly the three distances – near, middle and far. Think about textures of growth and foliage in the foreground and perhaps a foreground reference which crosses the composition (signpost? tree? etc.). We’re going to work on useful visual note-taking for a working drawing leading to a painting.