Water Colour Techniques

 

Using Water Colours To Create a Landscape Picture.

 

 

My year 5 and 6 class were working with the text Floodlands by Marcus Sedgwick. The book deals with many themes but mainly looks at global warming and the rising shore lines. In the book Norwich has been cut off from the rest of Britain and the main character Zoe is stuck on Norwich which is now an island.

 

 

 

 

 

As part of our cross curricular link to the book I decided that looking at water colours and landscapes fitted nicely with the book. We took a couple of weeks looking at different watercolour techniques using video from Pinterest and You Tube. Click here to find the videos.

 

I gave the children strips of cartridge paper (plain paper is too thin and would curl) and we used the varying techniques the children had chosen to try to paint the strips. The most popular were the cling film, salt, dry brush and wet on wet.

 

 

 

The following week, we used oil pastels to create our Eel island landscapes. Some children chose to draw the church that is a focal point on the island other chose to create a indiscriminate landscape. Next the children gave the Horizon a sky watercolour wash over the oil pastel landscape.

 

Whilst this was drying the children arranged their strips of watercolours as their sea cutting curves out to create a wave effect. The children then stuck these down to create a textures sea scape in the foreground.

 

This particular project is fantastic for introducing perspective of foreground, middle ground and background.