LESSON PLANS SUMMER TERM 2023 (1st half) lesson 6: Final episode - Oranges in watercolour!

This week is oranges plus. I'm asking my students to add to the oranges still life with a nice structural cloth and repeat last week's process with this added challenge. They will refer to their colour chart from last week to continue working with secondary colours.

Summer Term 1st half 2023 – lesson 6: Going a step further. Oranges in watercolour….plus.

· Set out your oranges in front of you. Add behind them a scrunched-up cloth. Create some nice structural folds.

· Refer to your colour chart from last week. You’re going to continue primarily with your secondary colours.

· As with last week, identify and reveal your lightest places…the places you intend to leave white.

· Using an orange wash (mix up plenty of it first) paint your whole page with it except for the shapes you’re leaving white. While you’re doing this, you don’t need to think about oranges, cloths or shadows…only think about the shapes you’re leaving white and put paint everywhere else.

· Again, as with last week, while this wash is wet, paint another of your secondary colours into it. Let the paint run, you don’t need to control it at this stage (other than to keep it off the white places).

· Perhaps put more orange paint in at this stage to add orangeness to your oranges, still allowing the apint to run.

· As the paint dries, look at your subject and ask yourself ‘where do I need some hard edges to exist?’.

· Look for the shape that attaches to those hard edges – is it a shape with mostly soft edges and only a hard edge where you’ve identified it?

· Paint that shape, create the hard edge, soften every other edge of that shape. Use good clean water to soften any edges. Paint the clean water alongside any edge you want to soften then with your brush just touch the edge you want to soften. This way you’ll allow that edge to flow into the clean water that you’ve painted down.

· Continue to build your painting in this way. Make sure that when you’re ready to create hard edges your painting is 110% dry.

Next lesson (after one week off for half term hols): Drawing – line, tone, hard edges and smooth transitions in soft pencil. Bring sketch books, erasers and soft (2B, 4B, 6B etc.) pencils.