Watercoloring with Youngin's: Project One

This year for our homeschooling co-op I am teaching a drawing class and a watercolor class. The water color class is for ages 6-9. For a great beginning video (designed with adults in mind but nevertheless useful for older children), check out Bobbi Dubbins' Watercolor DVD in my bookstore.

Watercolor is a medium that most children enjoy working with but which is sadly frustrating to work with unless you learn some basic techniques. In my class I am trying to teach those useful techniques in a way that is both interesting and do-able for the 6-9 crowd.

The first week, we did this project to learn about the colors of the rainbow, and how watercolors blend together.

First, the set up

You will need:

• Make sure you have WATERCOLOR paper (it doesn't have to be "the best" but it can't be regular photo copy paper or sketch paper...learning watercolors requires watercolor paper to be far less frustrating.


• Paper Towel




• Boards to tape the water color paper down onto. I have masonite drawing boards, but since I have so many students this year, I have taped them down to foam board cut to size too. This keeps the paper from buckling, and it also makes it easier to move the painting around without damaging the wet paper, and it makes a cool board.


• Masking tape


• Water colors (we used the variety in a tube...a little dab will do ya...with cheap palates).



• Brushes (I used some less expensive but still better-than-what-comes-in-children's -paint-kits plastic brushes). These ones have wooden handles and were in a set at Hobby Lobby.


• Two cups of clean water


• Old Tshirts to wear over clothes

First, the technique for not ruining your colors. I stressed this with the kids...don't mix your colors together in the palate itself, but when you want to go from one color to another, wipe your brush off on the paper towel, then dip in the water, then wipe again, then dip in the water and THEN touch the new color. We still had some messes but it wasn't as bad. If you are watercoloring with children, you will want to stress this one over and over again.

With this project, we started by wetting the taped down paper with water using a large brush.



Next, in the order of the rainbow, we painted each color, letting it run into the other color on the wet paper. If the paper is wet ahead of time, everything should run together. If it's hot and dry you may need more water, but experience shows me that 6-9 year olds always seem to have a problem in the other direction ;) Not to worry. Watercolor paper is very hearty.

The order of the rainbow is this: Red, Orange,Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet and back to Red (an easy way to remember it is: ROY-G-BIV). As I taught, I explained that red and yellow make orange, and that is why orange is in the middle, as well as yellow and blue make green, blue and violet make indigo, and indigo and red make violet. So, we also learned super simple color theory.





We covered the whole paper with the rainbow colors, and then left them to dry. Once they were mostly dry, my assistant and I carefully took the tape off (it did stick more to the foam board than to the masonite drawing boards), leaving a neat border around the edges. In 2 hours, it was nearly completely dry (the teacher's painting was dry in 30 minutes, but as I said, 6-9 year olds love water).