Springtime Spray Paint Garden Silhouettes

Springtime Spray Paint Garden Silhouettes

Spring is in the air! The bees are buzzing, the butterflies are fluttering, and flowers are blossoming! Today’s project get us outside enjoying nature and inspiring our art. I’ll take you step-by-step how to make a beautiful layered painting using liquid watercolors as spray paint. For a more in depth description, visit here to see the full lesson plan.

Learning Objectives

This lesson is an exercise in creative play using nature for inspiration. Students will learn about overlapping shapes to create a layered composition. Color harmony will also be explored in creating positive and negative shape silhouettes. A lesson in Botany can be integrated, teaching plant specie identification as well.

Materials:

materials for Springtime Spray Paint Garden Silhouettes

Having been an art teacher for ten years, there are certain materials I recommend that are tried and true. If you don’t have access to these materials, there are substitutes, but I cannot guarantee the same results and it may take some trial and error to figure out how to best manipulate the materials. I purchase most of my materials from dickblick.com, an art supply company that is dedicated to providing high quality products at a competitive cost. I actually use a lot of their brand name materials, because they are often as good in quality as brand names, but at a much lower cost.

1. Canson XL Watercolor Paper, 9×12
2. Blick Liquid Watercolors (or food coloring)
3. Pump Spray Bottles
4. Masking/ Painters Tape
5. Assortment of Leaves (various sizes and shapes, can be real or artificial)
6. Garden Themed Stencils/ Cut outs (optional)
7. Window Frame (see instructions for how to make a window frame in lesson plan)
8. Paper Towels

Procedure:

Step One: Go on a Nature Walk!

Take a walk through the yard or neighborhood searching for a variety of leaf sizes and shapes. This is a great opportunity to take the time to really notice your surroundings. I found some really beautiful ferns and some wild grapevines across the street from my house that I had never noticed before. If you are interested in learning more about plant identification and integrating a lesson in botany, check out the free Leafsnap app (not applicable to all regions yet) or some other web guides specific to your region.  There is a ton of information on the web. I also recommend the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers if you are interested in purchasing a book.

Step Two: Preparing your Space

1. I recommend doing this project outside if you can so you are surrounded by nature (and it’s better for mess-making). Cover your table surface with a plastic table cloth or some newspapers to avoid staining your surface with the liquid watercolors.
2. You will need to fill your spray bottles with one part liquid watercolor and dilute with one part water. A little goes a long way, so there is no need to fill the entire bottle up. You will want to limit the project to 1-3 colors, because too many colors will create “mud” when they mix. I recommend 1 color per layer, but you can experiment!
3.  Set up your paper, line up the frame on top of the paper and tape it down to the table.

lay frame on top of paper and tape down

Step Three: Creating your Composition

1. Starting with the smaller leaves and garden stencils, place the leaves face down (so they lay flat) on the paper and arrange them in a thoughtful way.
   

   lay small leaves and shapes face down

2. Take the medium size leaves and overlap them on the first layer. Be careful not to disturb your first layer and take your time to adjust the placement of all of your shapes.
   

   lay medium size leaves careful on top of first layer

3. Take your biggest leaf and arrange on top of the other leaves. Try to avoid the composition becoming overcrowded. This is a great project to discuss layering, overlapping shapes, and positive and negative space. At this point, when demonstrating the project to students, I ask a series of questions. Check out the lesson plan to find out some of the discussion points and essential questions that encourage critical thinking.
   

   place largest leave on top of composition

4. Discuss color harmony in as little or as much detail as you prefer. You can go into a color theory lesson about warm/ cool colors, analogous colors, complementary colors, triads, etc, or you can let the student determine three colors that they feel look good together. You want to make sure the colors are saturated and have strong contrast. I do not recommend using yellow, simply because it is so light. I chose a “dark”, “medium”, and “light” color for my composition and recommend thinking about the colors in terms of contrast.
   

   choose 1-3 colors considering how the colors will harmonize

5. Starting with your darkest color, hold your spray bottle about a foot above your composition and lightly mist your paper. Make sure not to get the pump too close to the paper or this may result in over saturated pools of color. Keep it high and make sure to mist around all of the negative space (paper not covered by leaves).
   

   spray a light mist of your darkest color over your shapes keeping your spray bottle about a foot from the paper

   

   make sure to cover the edges of the largest leaf, other areas can be lighter if desired

6. Carefully remove the largest leave (top layer). Observe how the leave masked the paper and left the paper white. Discuss what is the positive space and what is the negative space.
   

   remove largest leaf

7. Choose your second color, preferably a medium value, and lightly mist the color around the remaining leaves. Be careful not to over spray the negative space shape of the big leaf.
8. Carefully remove the second layer of medium leaves. Observe how the big leaf is no longer white, and how it became pushed behind the second layer of white negative space leaf shapes. Discuss how the positive and negative space shapes have changed.
   

   spray second color and then remove layer two of medium shaped leaves

9. Choose your third color, the lightest value, and mist the color around the remaining leaves, making sure not to over saturate the paper, but that all the small shapes have been covered so their edges will be visible.
10. Carefully remove the final layer of leaves and stencils. Remove the frame that has been protecting your outer edges of the paper. Take a corner of a paper towel and soak up any puddles that may have happened from over saturation of colors. Let dry flat.
    

    Springtime Spray Paint Garden Silhouettes

Step Four: Reflect and Assess

Have a final conversation reflecting about the learning objectives of layering, positive/ negative space, and color harmony. Discuss what you think is really successful, what was most challenging, and what you might change if doing the project again. After reflecting on the process, make another one!