Apples and a Mouse - a lesson on cropping and neutrals

This week, I set up a lesson using a painting by terrific artist, Carol Marine (See her work at the link here)  Carol's work is strong and very accessible to my middle-school students.  I chose this painting by Carol for its color scheme, whimsy, and cropped subject matter. The students needed to make a thumbnail sketch, then paint it in watercolor, using no black nor brown.  On a couple of the paint sets, I had to use "caution tape" to cover the black and brown just in case they "forgot."  We talked about black, brown, tan, gray, etc, and how they need to make those tones using complements after naming the black, brown, tan, gray, etc, by using one of the primary or secondary colors as adjective.  "Green gray", "orange brown", "reddish tan".  They got the hang of it.  We'll finish this week. 

 

Thanks for looking!