Elementary Watercolor Art Projects
Watercolor painting is a versatile medium that children can use to learn many painting techniques and styles. Since watercolors are water-soluble, this medium is easy to clean which makes it perfect for elementary classrooms. Watercolors allow children to be spontaneous and free with their art.
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Materials and Special Effects
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Masking tape can be used to create a border on paper by taping down the four sides of the paper, or glue the finished watercolor to colored construction paper to add a border. Stencils, pencils and markers are used to draw the shapes and patterns of what you want the children to paint. Salt will create texture on the watercolor as it absorbs the moisture the paint concentrates on that spot creating intense polka dots. Clear wax crayons leave a line of wax residue on the paper where the watercolor paint will not stick, creating textures and designs.
Styles of Watercolor
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There are several styles of painting with watercolors such as wet-on-wet. Wet the paper lightly with clean water, and then paint with watercolor onto the wet paper. The colors should blend together. This technique creates a wash and is great for skies and backgrounds. To use the wet-on-dry style, paint wet watercolors onto dry paper. This is good for details. The dry brush style calls for getting your brush full of color and blotting the water out on a towel. This works well for deeply saturated colors and sharp details. To paint a fluid background with sharper details over top, paint a wash, let it dry and then paint on it again.
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Beginning Project Themes
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Choose projects good for beginning elementary children such as creating or copying a color-by-number page and making photocopies for children to paint in the colors or having children use crayons to write their name on paper and then watercoloring around it. For holidays paint snowflakes, ornaments, eggs, turkey hands, fireworks or valentines, whichever is appropriate for the time of year. Celebrate the seasons by placing leaves and flowers under paper, rubbing the paper with crayons to create a shape and then painting with watercolor over the shapes.
Advanced Project Themes
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For more advanced elementary children, consider having students draw fish or night-time animals, paint dry-on-dry, and then do a blue wash over the piece. Let the children abstractly paint what they feel. Talk about how other children's pieces make them feel. Still life paintings with fruits and other foods can introduce complementary colors, highlights, shadows and composition to the art lesson.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit watercolor palettes and brush image by egal from Fotolia.com
