Dear Kendra,
I am a grade 3 teacher at Eileen Madson Primary school in Invermere. Over the past couple of years I have bought several cards of your watercolours. I have tried to teach your style for snowmen, flowers and winter forest scenes to my grade 3 students. I hope that this ok. Thank you so much for the inspiration.
Lorraine Holmes
Grade 3
Hi Lorraine,
Thanks for your email. I’m happy I could inspire you especially as you are passing along the inspiration to a new generation of budding artists. Teaching children to paint is so exciting because they are so imaginative. Children will push the boundaries and explore with the paint which is very rewarding when you are teaching them.
A few of my favourite tricks to show children are:
- With a wet paint mixture lay down some green paint at the edge of the page letting it pool up. Then use a kitchen fork to quickly pull grass blades out of the pool of paint onto the page. It saves so much time and looks more natural than using a small brush to paint grass.
- With watercolour paint you can create snow or stars by sprinkling salt on the paper as the paint begins to dry. You will get different results depending on how wet the paint still is.
- Use a piece of masking tape to lay down the trees. Paint your background over top. Then remove the masking tape and add some details to the tree. Works especially well for a night scene with the moon and birch trees.
- Use a white candle to draw secret invisible shapes and then bring them to life by painting bright colours over the wax drawings.
Have fun and happy painting!
Kendra
