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Summer Seascape

Adding Texture to Art and Life

What you need:

Pencil
Watercolor paper or drawing paper
Large watercolor paintbrush
A set of watercolor paints and water bowl
Salt (table, epsom, or kosher)
Plastic wrap
Cotton balls, colored paper, glue, markers, stamps (optional)

What you do:

1. Lightly draw two lines with your pencil to divide your watercolor paper in three horizontal sections.Don’t worry about making straight lines. In fact, slightly wavy lines might be a good thing.2. Next, prep your paints. Dip your paintbrush in water and drip a drop into each paint. Let sit for a minute. This will loosen up the paint.
3. Dip your brush in water. Now paint the bottom third of your paper yellow, the color of sand. This is the foreground.
4. Once the area is covered, sprinkle salt on top of the yellow paint before it dries.

5. Dip your brush in water and rinse before moving on to a new color.

 

6. While the yellow is drying, paint the middle section a color of the sea (blues, greens, purples). It’s okay if your green paint runs into the yellow paint. Blending is good!

 7. Lay 4-inch strips of plastic wrap on top of the wet sea watercolor, and then scrunch up the wrap, creating texture in the waves. Leave plastic wrap on the paper and let dry.
 8. Dip your brush in water to rinse and then paint top section, the background, a sky color. After you have a smooth covering of paint, drip a little water over your sky with the brush.9. Set your work of art aside to dry for two hours.

 

10. Later, remove plastic wrap and brush off remaining salt to see how these techniques created interesting textures in your artwork.

   11. Take it further: Add details to your seascape (boats, people, umbrellas, whitecaps) using paints, stamps, or markers. You might pull apart cotton balls, and using glue, add wispy clouds to the sky or whitecaps to the waves to give your textured seascape even more dimension.
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