Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Trees

My goal for my watercolor students is to have them learn how to bleed colors together when they want, and keep them separate when they do not. This series of modern trees were easy to draw, and left lots of room for watercolor experimenting.1. I was inspired by Eloise Renouf’s Etsy store, and used her designs to help students draw very simple abstract trees. I drew six or so examples on my board and had the students draw their three favorite in pencil across a sheet of watercolor paper.2. I emphasized that all the pencil lines had to be traced very heavily with crayon so they would show up when complete.3. Students were to use two colors of paint in each tree, each color overlapping the other just a bit. If this is done while the paints are still wet, a very pretty bleeding will occur. I also asked them to use two shades of color in the grass, as I had provided both green and yellow green for them to work with. The sky was to be just one color to keep the multicolors from becoming too much. I love how they turned out, this was made by Aleena, a talented 2nd grader. Thanks Aleena!