Getting Salty with watercolor on a Thursday afternoon
Getting salty with Watercolor on a recent Thursday -
S.A.L.T - Sharing and Learning Together is a very popular program at my church.
It’s an afterschool program for children grades 1st – 6th grade which happens on the third Thursday of the month.
I am part of the Brainstorming group that creates the curriculum for this program at First Presbyterian Church.
The theme for this month’s program was Water we tied it into some scripture about Noah and the Ark. This workshop took place right after the storms Irma and Maria had hit the US, the Caribbean and Puerto Rico so the topic was very relevant. We wanted to talk to the kids about the effect these storms had on people and do something to help. They helped to assemble personal hygiene and cleaning kits to send to families affected. I volunteered to do a painting project using watercolor, salt and Noah’s Ark with the kids. We also had a cool experiment that showed the kids how to make a water filtration system using a soda bottle, rocks, charcoal, cotton. They took dirty water and poured it through and voila, clean water.
After a lot of research and testing of concepts I decided to first have the kids draw a simple ark shape or any thing they associated with Noah, the Ark or water in crayon on the paper.
Next step was to use an eyedropper and drip spots of liquid watercolor paint on their paper in a random way, letting the colors bleed and blend. I narrowed the palette down to a green, and aqua and a blue pool of paint. The liquid watercolor paints were so easy to use , loved them!
Third step the kids took big brushes and in big broad strokes covered the surface of the paper with clean water. Now all the paint started to mix together. Magic!
Next step I gave them pinches of kosher salt and table salt to sprinkle on the page. The salt creates patterns on the paint as it dries and the results were so fun and each one was unique.
The symbolism was great because the program is called SALT and we used the salt…. the theme was water and we painted with watercolor. I love to teach and want to find more ways to share my love of painting. Being a watercolor artist is so important to me and I hope to share my love of this medium with many.