I'm always a little nervous introducing a water colour painting task to my students. Painting is really not a strong point of mine; the brush techniques, the messy mixed palettes, the warped paper! This time round I was a little more prepared with an introductory lesson on techniques (this is a great video tutorial) and some  artwork inspiration from the late Australian artist Albert Namatjira. I'm always looking for industry examples of current or past artists to share with my students. To my surprise showing Year 7's to Albert Namatjira paintings began a whole tangent of discussion about where student's had traveled (like Uluru), sharing stories of their 'outback' experiences and describing the Australian landscape. It became a fantastic way for students to connect with their painting topic even before picking up a brush! Learning Intention:

• Experiment with a variety of brush techniques to create water colour artwork
• Draw on inspiration from local Australian Artist

What You'll Need:

• Landscape examples - we used artwork from Australian artist Albert Namatjira
• Paper for experimenting
• A5 water colour paper for final artwork
• water colour paint palettes
• water palettes
• water jug
• flat brush
• round brush
• tooth brush
• fan brush - you could replace this with sponges, or splay the hairs on a large flat brush

"The celebrate Aboriginal painter Albert Namtajira loved the Ghost Gums of the Northern Territory... They are evocatively Australian, their white trunks contrasting with the red earth and the deep blue sky of the Dreamtime region that has for centuries sustained Namatjira's Aranda people" - Richard Allen

Water Colour Warm Up Tutorial - 50 minutesSteps:1. Students copied down each technique and steps in their visual diary. Download this document here Watercolour Techniques

 

 

 

2. Students set up their work station like this. Instead of taping their A4 page into four like the image below, we actually taped into 6 sections.

 

 

3. As students set up their work station this tutorial was put up on the projector. We began to apply each technique one at a time by first watching the appropriate section in the tutorial. Then repeating it whilst painting along with the instructions. There are thirteen techniques covered in this video, they're excellent, however we only had time to complete six that were the most relevant to our landscape project.Once we had an taste of how to apply some basic water colour techniques we were ready to talk about brushes and get into our landscape project.Water Colour Landscape Project Steps: 100 minutes1. Students located all their materials from the arts cupboard and were responsible for setting up (and packing up) their work station.

 

 

4. Talk about the brushes. We used a fan brush, large flat brush, small flat brush, round brush and tooth brush. We drew an sketch of each brush in our visual diary and talked about how each would achieved a different type of brush stroke.3. Experiment with brush techniques.  After a brief demonstration. Students were free to use any colour they liked and apply the following techniques in these examples to their A3 experimentation page/s. I was looking for a minimum of two pages of experimenting. For those students who finished quickly, a walk around the room to look at their peers artwork prompted them to keep creating some more samples.Next time I think will ask students label and comment on their technique and the brush they used for future reference.3. Next we selected an Albert Namatjira landscape as inspiration. I had a selection or artworks printed (A5) and laminated for students to reference throughout this task. I will be able to reuse these examples for future projects, it's definitely work the laminating effort! You can download these Albert Namatjira artwork examples ready for colour printing.