We have moved on from watercolours in  our Art class.  We tried a couple more techniques with watercolours first, including masking areas with masking fluid and combining watercolour with black pen outline.  Maybe I will post about them some time, but as I have yet to post about the giant snowman my kids made with their cousin in January,  I wouldn’t hold your breath!

When we first began watercolour everyone complained that it was hard and they couldn’t do it, but as the weeks went by they improved and mastered several different techniques.  The week I brought out the pastels, I was told again that it was too hard.  It is hard, I agree and has to be approached quite differently to watercolour.

We have several sets of pastels, each one a little different and by the end of the lesson they are spread from one end of the table to the other.  During the first lesson we tried several techniques with pastel just to see what they could do.  Blending was the most popular and  continues to be used quite a lot.  It is hard to get used to the idea that the colour  needs to be built up layer over layer.   Although we roughly shade in the main colour areas first it takes a while to give definition to the elements in the picture.

The following pastel drawings are from our second class; the first week we drew fruit, something I did many times  in highschool and college art classes.  It wasn’t very popular with my group so we moved onto landscapes the next week.

The one above with the dramatic sky is B9’s.