Description of the Unit – This is a purely technical unit that allows students to explore combining watercolor painting techniques with other media.
The students began with practicing the six basic watercolor techniques:
- Dry on dry
- Wet on dry
- Dry on wet
- Wet on wet
From here students then played with adding other media to watercolor, such as pen, crayon or oil pastel, salt and rubbing alcohol.
And that’s it! The remainder of the unit was spent giving the students the freedom to play and create their own designs and compositions. Most students seemed to most enjoy the combination of pen and watercolor, but a few still worked on paintings that incorporated the other materials.
As far as materials, this unit works best with liquid watercolor and watercolor paper. We also used drawing pens, table salt, rubbing alcohol, oil pastels and crayons. Besides brushes, it’s also good to have droppers, Q-tips and sponges.
In the K-8 Art Studio with Anita Sagastegui 