March - Watercolor Fish

Supplies:

Watercolor paper

Watercolor paint

Brushes

Water

salt

pencils

Pictures of fish

crayons

Process: 1. Drawing the fish

Draw two rectangles on the board. Draw a small fish in the middle of one and a large fish in the other. Make sure that other than size the fish look pretty much the same. Ask students which fish they like the best – almost all the students will say the bigger fish. Explain that its not what you drew but how you drew it that made the difference. Explain that the space left on the paper around the small fish is called negative space. Sometimes an artist might draw a small fish on a big piece of paper if he wants the fish to look lonely but most artists don’t leave a lot of negative space.

Tell the students to think about this as they draw their fish and to try to draw their fish as big as possible. Pass out pictures of fish. Tell students they can draw one of these fish or make up a fish of their own. They can add details to the background like seaweed or other fish. And should add details to their fish like fins, stripes, scales. They should try not to have too many large shapes, as these will be harder to paint. Also tell them to draw lightly with the pencil

My experience has been that the students spend a lot of time on this and keep erasing and redrawing – which leaves them less time to paint so I try to speed this up. You could tell them to try not to use the eraser or that the drawing doesn’t need to be perfect or just give them 5 minutes to finish.

2. Crayon tracing

When they have finished the drawing they should trace their pencil lines with crayon. They can use one color or many colors and/or white. You can introduce the concept of good craftsmanship and tell their to go over their lines carefully, no sketchy lines.

3. Painting

When they are ready to paint the first step its to get the paintbrush wet and “paint” one shape of their drawing with just water. Then they should put paint on their brush and go over the same area. Most kids don’t use enough paint or water when they watercolor so I show them how to make a puddle in the color box and tell them to stir their brush around in there until its full of paint. Tell them when the paint is still wet they can add some salt to it and see what happens – it will add a texture to the paint. Tell them they can add salt everywhere or just in certain areas.