Time for MY tutorial

 

Hello again, everyone!  Today I'm posting an assignment from my Art Class which is 

to make a tutorial for my classmates.  Feel free to follow along, this one is easy but fun!

Alright peeps, this time around it's MY tutorial.  Now, considering I'm still a baby artist, I wanted to pick something that I was confident in teaching that I also felt people could do themselves no matter what level they are at.  It also needed to be fun.  My partner is an educator and I also worked in education for multiple years.  I remembered this idea from an art teacher that had come to my classroom.  She used markers instead of water color paint.  I felt like this was something adults could apply and have fun with.  So, whether you are a beginner, an intermediate, or and expert I think you can follow along and apply this in your own way.

    

    First things first.  Gather your supplies. 

You will need: 1 piece of paper (some type of thinker stock paper works best), 1 paint brush (the size you need is determined by the size of your artwork and the detail you want, I got away with using 1 medium brush for my whole piece), water based markers (I used Crayola), a paper towel or two, and a cup of water.

Now you have to come up with your setting idea.  It can be simple or complex.  That depends on how good you are with water colors.  For me, I've only done water colors a couple times, so I stuck with a simple setting.  Once you have your idea in mind, there are a few things we can do.  

    

You could draw it lightly with pencil directly onto your paper. Or you could draw it on another paper first to use as a reference.  Also, you can just freehand your design with marker which is how I did it.  For the purposes of this particular artwork, it's important that you outline the areas with your marker.  If you're do this freehand like myself, it should look something like this.  

I wanted to add a little touch of complimentary color so I decided to throw in the Sun at this point.

With the outline done, now we can put the markers away and get the paint brush ready.  Lay out your paper towel, you will need to dry off your brush between colors.  Also, if you haven't already, you need to fill a cup with water.  

I do all my work at the dinner table, so I also recommend laying out some newspaper underneath your art piece and your supplies.  Protect the table!  

Okay!  One thing I learned from trial and error when developing this was to start with the small details that are close to other colors.  Also, I noted that using too much water can cause the colors to run across the paper.  It may be helpful to you to practice on an empty piece of paper first to get a good idea of how much water you want to use.  If you don't want to trial it first, I have one piece of advice.  It's like salt, you can't take salt out of a food dish, but you can always add more.  So first things first, dip your paint brush into the water.  

I started with the green of the trees.  With my wet brush, I made downward strokes until all the green had been blended.  Once the tops of the trees were colored in nicely, I rinsed my brush and dried it off with the paper towel.  I waited for the green to dry and then started on the tree trunks.

With that had been done, I moved to the ground. For this part, it's important to get as much color from that outline as you can.  You have to use that outline to fill in the entire empty space.

This is what mine looked like with the trees and the ground done.  You can see some of my green ran through the trunk because I was impatient and didn't wait for it to dry.

Now while waiting for the ground to dry, I moved on to the clouds and the Sun.  I try to stay within the bounds of my originally intended shape, but as you can see with the Sun I didn't stay within the outline, which is okay!  It's your artwork, do what you want with it.  Don't forget to rinse and dry your brush in between different colors.  You can also change your water out at any point you want if it changes too much to one color.

Okay peeps.  Time to do the sky!  This is the biggest section, and it's the hardest section because you have to maneuver around your details.  Rinse that brush, dry it off, and wet it again.  I started in the upper left had corner and moved inward.  When your brush stops moving color, get it wet again and keep spreading that blue.  Depending on what your end goal for this is, you can drag the blue over your details.  

Aaaaand voila!  You're masterpiece is complete.  Hopefully like me, you had fun creating this piece.  I am glad to be able to share with you that you can use water based markers from the super market in place of water color paint.  I want to give a huge thank you to that art teacher for providing a memorable idea.