Monday, April 28, 2014

Collaborative Watercolor Painting

This was an interesting project to watch as it came together.  Kindergarten completed large watercolor resist art pieces.  I painted the big black lines and they filled in.  I didn't give them specific instructions as to how I wanted them to fill these in, that was left up to them.   I wanted to see how they went about the process themselves.  All they were told is that they would use crayon to add details and watercolor to fill space with color.  You could really see who the take charge personalities were, right away giving instructions...maybe future teachers?  Some groups had a discussion before starting to make an agreement on the steps and then still other groups that dove right in and started coloring without discussion.  These were the most interesting to watch, most of the groups realized before too long there had to be some boundaries, and then some groups argued a bit.  As hard as it was, I didn't intervene.  I wanted to see what there problem solving skills were.  Almost all groups came to some kind of agreement somewhere along the way, with only a few pouters, I think pretty successful overall. I liked that there were those who chose to work alone, and some decided to work in pairs or groups.  However they all completed them, I think they will brighten and cheer up our hallways! 










20 comments:

  1. These are beautiful! I love doing collaborative pieces like this! I usually do with my older kids but my Kinders are so awesome this year that your Kinders beautiful work has inspired me to try something collaborative with them! Thanks! :)

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    1. Thanks Mrs. C. You will have a blast watching them, I have a very large group of kinder students...at the end of the day...and plenty of challenges in this group and they did great! If you have a really good group they will do great. Thanks for stopping in :)

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  2. These are gorgeous! Would love to do something like this with my kiddos.

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  3. Wow! The finished work is so impressive... I bet you had some very proud little artists! Great lesson!
    One question: What kind of paint did you use for the black lines?

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    1. Hi Elizabeth. Thanks so much. They loved this project, it was a lot of fun. I actually used black acrylic paint, nothing special. I just drew out the lines with a thick sponge brush ahead of time. Thanks for stopping by!

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  4. Did you use canvas or paper for the surface?

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  5. Beautiful. Did they start with crayons then used watercolors or they had both choices at the same time??

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    1. Thank you! Yes, they were given crayon the first part of the lesson. Then they were given watercolors once they filled the shapes with lines.

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  6. Love this, and I agree, it is fun to watch the students working together. I try to do this at the end of every year with my PreK and K artists...it provides me with bright colored artwork to have hanging on the walls when school starts in the fall (I don't know about you, but our school hallways are so stark and white when I take down artwork in spring). I have my high school artists who finish projects early help paint the black designs for me to make it a collaboration between my oldest and youngest students.

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  7. Thanks for sharing , I will be using this as an end of term activity .

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  8. This is beautiful ! thank you for the inspiration

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  9. What size are these sheets of paper? They look big.

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    1. These are 18 by 24 inch sheets, multiple sheets put together.

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  10. Really inspiring! Colorful, lots of creative variety and a demonstration of unity in diversity. Thanks for sharing

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  11. So after you paint the black lines do they do the crayons first and then the water color? The crayon are what make the lines show under the watercolor?

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  12. wonderful looking project. This is on my lesson planner now! Thank you!

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