Stylized Winter Trees in Watercolour

 

This is a popular winter landscape lesson I found years ago HERE on the wonderful Dutch art blog "Kids Artists".

I love this lesson because it incorporates beautiful winter landscapes which my country, Canada, is famous for!  I'm lucky to live near the world famous Rocky Mountains and have done many hikes, including Chester Lake below, in the winter. It's an intense workout (snowshoes and going uphill is not fun, lol) but the views and mountain air are worth it.

So my Grade 4-6 students start by looking at photos of our beautiful winter forests here in Alberta. We discuss the variety of sizes and how trees get smaller as they get further away. 

For this lesson, we are creating stylized winter tress, meaning they are simplified for artistic purposes.

Using watercolour paper (we use Hilroy brand, it's fantastic), students paint it with liquid watercolours and sprinkle on salt. This will be their tree paper. Let dry overnight.

Next class, students use another sheet of watercolour paper and paint a sky of their choice. 

Then they dab on white paint for falling snow. 

Switching to the salt watercolor tree paper, students use a ruler to draw a variety of sizes of triangles for their evergreen trees. Cut out. Then they outline them in gold or silver marker.

Glue these onto the sky paper.

These are always a successful project for all abilities!

Floral Foam Sculptures

This is a great lesson using inexpensive materials to teach reductive sculpture.

It uses 'wet' floral foam which I buy at Dollarama. 1 block per student.

See my previous posts on this project HERE and HERE.

Grade 10-12 students start off my sketching a plan for their sculpture. I encourage abstract works but there's always a few who want to carve something realistic. This is always a super popular project!

Once they have a plan, they start carving. Each student gets a box lid to work in (from the boxes of photocopy paper in the office- I hoard these ahead of time). The box lids really contain the mess effectively. They dump them out at the end of each class.

We use simple carving tools like plastics knives, chopsticks and bamboo sticks. I also have some plastic clay tools. Fingers are great for smoothing as the floral foam is incredible soft. Do not drop these- they will break!

Keep carving and then start smoothing with fingers. 

Once you're happy with the carving, prime with a couple layers of acrylic paint. 

The foam really sucks up the paint, so you do need two coats.

Then students paint their sculptures using acrylic paint. They are encouraged to mix colours. 

Once dry, varnish them for gloss and protection. Students then hot glue them to a wooden base.

Some finished sculptures- Grade 10-12

 

Hundertwasser Houses Watercolour Paintings

This is one of the most popular lessons on my blog, 

See my original post of this lesson HERE.

Friedensreich  Hundertwasser (1928 – 2000) was an Austrian architect and painter. I first became aware of his work when I was travelling through Austria and saw his architecture in Vienna- it was so original and unlike anything I have ever seen, though it did remind me a bit of Gaudi's work in terms of outright originality. The vibrancy of his colour, the lack of straight lines and recurring motifs make him a good choice for students of any age to study.

The common themes in his work include bright colours, organic forms, love of nature, individualism, spirals, onion domes, 'lollipop' style trees, windows of different shapes and sizes and rejecting straight lines. He called straight lines "the devil's tools" and considered them 'ungodly'. He also disliked the monotany of the colour grey saying "Colourfulness, variety and diversity are by all means better than the grey, the average grey."

Although Hundertwasser first became well-known for his boldly-coloured paintings, he is more widely known for his individual architectural designs. Ecology and fantasy were very important in his works and he created his buildings in a way that nature and human beings could live together, including having live trees in and on the rooftops of his buildings.

Grade 7-9 students started by sketching their fantasy buildings on 

long wide paper (poster paper cut in half)

Then, using black glue and a bamboo stick, they outlined all the pencil lines. This is very tedious and the kids hate this step, lol. But it makes a really cool organic line full of energy and line variety.

I let these dry a week.

Student painted them using either pan or liquid watercolours.

Liquid watercolours are more vivid.  

Some of the finished artworks: