Splish-Splash

PRELIMINARY WATERCOLOR

BEGINNING 2-D ART

watercolor, charcoal, india ink

These watercolors were done by my beginners after we did a 10 day unit of practicing watercolor techniques.

My students really seemed to enjoy working in watercolor and I was very pleased with their first attempts at a composition. 

Subject matter was of their choosing.

And several of them brought in a bit of charcoal to enhance the value range.

Junior Elias Rodriguez also brought into his work an india ink self-portrait which I felt was a brilliant design idea.

And I think the class favorite was done here by senior Yoo-Bin Han from a photo she took of our team captains of our baseball team, seniors Alex Arias and Cole Mesa.

 Her skill with the watercolor as well as the portraits blew us away!

Next we have this lovely floral work by junior Karen Malcolm.  

Notice the beautiful wet into wet background along with the great greens she was able to mix so the leaves would look more realistic.

Junior Michael Cantu, who always gives us the most moody, thought provoking landscapes, does not let us down here.  

I really like his monochromatic color scheme with the paynes grey and how it sets the tone for the piece.

And his birds, once again, are so very realistic!

Youngster Nari Park, one of my few 8th graders this year, is really pushing herself out of her comfort zone in this work by altering the edges of the paper as well as bringing in charcoal to make her dragonfly pop.

Very pretty piece Nari!

Junior Smurthi Maganti brings us tranquility and peace with her design and soothing color choices (above) while junior Sunny Kim (below) really captures a pooped out kitten just before it falls asleep.

Senior Annie Ro was one of my braver students, not afraid to bring in quite a bit of charcoal for detail and value (above).

And notice her wonderful sky with the puff clouds?

These were practiced in our 10 day unit before this piece.

By dropping a bit of clean water into the wet pigment on the paper yields fantastic cloud formations.

And lastly one of my favorites, this classic Mustang from the 1970's.

How do I know this?

My boyfriend's dad owned one and allowed us to drive it to the prom in 1973, only it was blue with white racing stripes.  :)

Alex Arias, yes, one of the young men in Yoo-Bin's portrait, who found he had an artistic gift his senior year is the maker of this very cool watercolor.  

Notice the great cast shadow under the car, and how he mixed a bit of red into the grey to make it more interesting to the eye?

Brilliant work Alex!!!

I sure hope you explore more art classes in college.

Preliminary Watercolors -Student Work

 After spending several days teaching my Beginning 2-D kids a few of the watercolor basics, these are the prelims. they came up with.  I'm very pleased.

Junior Anne Allan showed complete mastery with a few strokes of her brush.  Her work is spontaneous and fresh.

8th Grader Annie Oh brilliantly captured her cloudy sky and senior Louis Manuel (my color blind student) came up with the adorable design below.

Junior Deena Younan balances her work thru complimentary colors, and notice the textural cloud formations, done by sprinkling salt over top the wet pigment.

One of my favorites was this clever design by junior Cathy Luo.  I love the drip falling from the leaf.  And I'm also gravitating towards the warm color palette that senior Sheila San Agustin used in her work below.

And lastly, we have junior Alex Lee with this beautiful moonscape.  Love the turquoise he was able to mix from the watercolor set I gave them.   So sensory.

Preliminary Watercolor with Charcoal - Student Work

Junior Michelle Lee bringing in fabulous texture with charcoal on top of watercolor.

Above senior Marivel Aguirre's most outstanding piece of the year.  I was so impressed with you woman when you turned this beauty in.  Way to go!!

4th Quarter for my Beginning 2-D kids is all about color, and introducing them to many color media and the techniques to use them.  After about 2 weeks of practice with watercolor, these were their first attempts to put it all together in a subject of their choosing.  We also a few days with charcoal and combining it with watercolor, so you will also see a bit of charcoal in each of these pieces.

Above senior Rachel Kim did a lovely work with both her charcoal and watercolor.

I was also really impressed with junior Gary Fong's sensitive depiction of the French countryside.  And just look at junior Sarah Zhang's incredible piece below, what a great design, something you would see illustrated in a children's storybook. 

And then there is senior Tiffany Wang,who masters everything she tries in all these courses she's taken with me, 2-D, 3-d and Ceramics.  A very talented young lady.

What's really amazing is that these were their first attempts in watercolor, a very difficult medium!