Birch Tree Landscape Watercolor Paintings 5th grade

These paintings seem especially beautiful this year.  The 5th graders used a technique called "mask out" to protect the white watercolor paper in the shape of birch trees.

 After making 3 trees out of masking tape, students drew a landscape behind the trees

 then traced the picture (but NOT the
trees) with small tipped permanent marker.
 
The next art class was spent learning about
color mixing. The 5th graders really
enjoyed making the tertiary colors from
a primary and secondary color.
 

After we learned how to make colors, we added them to our landscapes. The rule for this project is that every color on the painting must be a mixed color, even browns and blacks cannot come directly from the paint set.  Students painted right over the tape.

 
The paint had to dry completely so we waited until the next art class to remove our tape.  We looked at real birch tree bark and then used a tiny paintbrush to make the bark on our trees look real. A light gray value was added to one side of the trees to make them look round.
 
 
Finally, if the season was spring, summer or autumn we added leaves to the birch trees with a larger brush. Artists were asked to think of a title for their landscape and pictures were framed.  

I think the colors the kids used and the way they made the birch trees look so three dimensional is really amazing.  My art intern says this is one of her favorite projects, she could not believe how beautiful the finished paintings were. We are very proud of the great effort by our 5th graders.