Introduction to Watercolor

In this video, Cindy Phan shares her method for introducing watercolor to students using a mosaic technique.

Cindy begins by letting her students simply experiment with the watercolors, and then she challenges them to create gradients using the water to dilute the colors. Next, students cut out their gradients and use the different shaded scraps to build a mosaic.

Resources

Download Cindy's rubric and color grid as a pdf.

For further ideas, introduce watercolor's unique properties by comparing and contrasting artists' watercolor work with their oil paintings. Here are a couple of pairs you might use:

• Winslow Homer's Rowing Home in watercolor compared to his Gloucester Harbor in oils.
• Paul Cézanne watercolor self-portrait versus his oil self-portrait.

You might also expose students to some historical mosaics:

• Here is a mosaic illustrating Ulysses and the sirens
• An ancient street mosaic
• A modern mosaic: Pacman restroom tiles