Under Water Watercolors

We have been working on these painting for a couple weeks now. These are the ones that the girls have completed and are dried. As we have been concentrating a lot on color and color schemes, I thought it would be fun to create paintings of bright tropical fish.

This also was our first assignment in class that the girls used watercolors. They are a challenging medium. I was suprised as I worked with the girls at how much fun I had working in watercolor as I most often opt for acrillic or oils when in my own work. I really must pull these out more often. We also experimented with the chemical reaction of adding salt to wet watercolor paints to create the really cool textures and effects you see in the girls pictures below.

I think they are bold and beautiful paintings! Nice work, ladies.

Kylee's Laker-colored fishies. Her painting is beautiful, and although you cannot see it , I have to tell you, her contour drawing underneath turned out really impressive.
Kylas fish. Beautiful complimentary colors, and check out that gorgeous water. I am super impressed. I love this painting.

Arika. Check out those bold colors - I always admire the way Arika is not afraid to dig right in and lay down that paint strong.

This one is mine. Not exactly a masterpiece, but like I said, it was good for me to pull out the watercolors again! I am motivated now to brush up my skills with this medium.

Funny

I have to share this cute comment made by my sweet Kylee. We have been talking a lot about color and color schemes in our class the last few weeks. For our current assignment we are working on watercolor paintings of tropical fish.

Kylee was showing me the fish that she had chosen for her painting and I excitedly asked, "Oh that's perfect, do you know what kind of color combination that is?" It was a purple and yellow fish - complimentary colors. So she took me by surprise when she, just as excited as I was, replied back, "Yes, it's the Lakers!!"

I love these girls. They are great students and are always surprising me.

Tribute to Piet Mondrian

For this assignment, we first talked about Dutch artist Piet Mondrian. His non-representational paintings are composed of lines and primary colors. We studied and imitated his designs using straight lines and bold blocks of color. They are completed in acrillic paint. The girls worked on two compositions, concentrating on the aspect of creating color schemes. The first using complimentary colors, and the second using tertiary colors. The girls used their color wheels which were previously completed to choose the colors for their pictures. They definitely are getting their practice in mixing colors and painting. Here are their finished pieces:
Alyssa


Arika

Delaney