Missy's Spooky Watercolor

When you get ready to paint with watercolors, you’ll want to have your nice, thick watercolor paper, some paper towels for resting your paint brushes and dabbing off excess water, your paint set and a paintbrush or two. Prepare the colors you are using by dripping a few drops of clean warm water onto the paints. I like to load my brush with the first color and mix it around a bit in a small puddle in the mixing tray (the lid of the paint set). Make sure you clean your brush in your water between colors. Be careful or your colors will get mixed up in their palettes and we want those to stay pure. If your water starts getting lots of paint in it, get up and get some new clean water.

The technique we are going to use is called a watercolor wash, specifically a wet-on-wet wash. This means our watercolor paper will be wet, and then we bring wet paint onto it. Having all that wet will make our colors bleed and blend together. 

The other part of our project involves choosing different Halloween themed objects to draw on black paper and then cut out. This will create a silhouette effect. A silhouette is the dark shape and outline of a person or an object visible against a lighter background especially in dim light. 

• Watercolor paper
• Kids watercolor set (with paint brush)
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Black construction paper
• Water 
• Water cup
• Paper towels
• Exacto knife (optional)

1. Dip your paint brush (a larger one if you have it) in your water and brush it on your paper. Cover the page with water, but don’t make it soaking wet, just a thin layer of water. 
2. With your prepared paint, load up your brush with yellow paint and brush it across the top ⅓ of your paper (paper should be horizontal). It will bleed and flow a bit on your wet paper. 
3. Clean your brush in your water cup. 
4. Load your brush with orange paint and brush it across the middle ⅓ of your paper. Make sure you touch right up to the yellow paint so the orange and the yellow mix. You can even overlap the orange on the yellow a bit.
5. Clean your brush in your water cup. 
6. Load your brush with red paint and brush it across the bottom ⅓ of your paper. Again, touch right up against or a bit overlapping the orange.
7. Clean your brush. 
8. Let your watercolor wet-on-wet wash dry while you work on the second part of the project. 
9. Using your pencil, draw some spooky images (Check out THIS document for image ideas!) on your black construction paper to create a Halloween scene. You can use the ideas page or come up with your own. 
10. Carefully cut out the Halloween scene. If you have pieces that need to be cut out of the middle of images (ghost eyes, jack-o-lantern faces, etc.) you can use scissors or have a parent cut them with an Exacto knife. 
11. Glue your Halloween scene on top of your watercolor wash (once it’s dry). Ta-dah!

Look! You have created a creepy sunset scene! It looks like it could be Halloween night! Now you can hang it in your room or on the refrigerator as a Halloween decoration. Be creative and have fun!

**If you have a day with very light rain, you can make rain papers. Do a wet-on-wet wash and let it dry. Then put your wash outside while it is raining for just a few minutes. You want the paper to just get some drops on it, not get completely wet again. The result is very beautiful and very interesting. Try it!