Ink and Watercolour Still Life

I am officially on holidays! Yay for me and all other school teachers! So here is one unit of work that my year 9s have almost finished. I’ve done this unit with my year 9s over the last few years and I think it’s really worthwhile because it covers ink drawing, water colour painting and still life composition all in one.

I start by getting the kids to do some practice drawing in their visual diaries with ink and skewers. At this point they all start complaining about the ink running and smudging. “That’s the point!” They soon get over it and let the ink run and be free, which ends up creating some beautiful line work.

After they have drawn their image, they can then use water colour paints to add colour.

Once the kids get over the fact that ink, water and watercolour paints are going to run into eachother and not look “neat”, they actually have a lot of fun with it and find it quite liberating.

Some tips? Discourage the use of too much water and repeated brush strokes over the same area! Even though the paper disintegrates before their eyes, they keep brushing! Good quality water colour paper is a must and I tell the kids how expensive it is too. If they have to start again, they get crappy cartridge paper.

Hopefully all these paintings will be finished at the beginning of next term and I’ll post some up to show you.