Have fun with warm and cool colors, creating simple & meaningful pieces of art that also make perfect Valentine’s Day cards!
What you need:
- Watercolor Paints
- Watercolor Paper x2 at least 8″x10″
- Paint Brush
- Masking Tape
- Gluestick
- Crayons
- Course Sea Salt
- Plastic Grocery Bag
What are warm and cool colors? Warm colors are reds, oranges and yellows, while cool colors are, blues, greens, & violets. Warm colors often make us think of warmth – fire, sunshine, heat. Cool colors tend to be more calming and make us think of water, sky, or ice. For this project we have three different elements: Your background paper, your hand, and your heart! We created a pattern by layering warm and cool colors for each element; Background in warm colors, hand in cool colors, heart in warm colors, or the reverse; background cool colors, hand warm colors, heart cool colors. Next to one another, warm and cool colors are very contrasting and make one another stand out! Decide if you would rather have a warm heart and cool hand or cool heart and warm hand!
Prepare your papers: You will need one piece of paper for your background and one piece to share for your hand and heart. Tape one piece of watercolor paper down to a work surface for your background with your masking tape. Cut the other piece of watercolor paper in two, trace an outline of your hand one piece, and draw a heart shape on the other (make sure your heart will fit in your hand outline). Tape your hand and heart pieces of watercolor paper to your work surface as well. Taping helps to keep your paintings flat while you work on them! Keep in mind the tape will resist the watercolor – try to apply the tape evenly around your background paper!
Listed below are three different watercolor techniques to make your warm and cool color hearts and hands! You can use any of the three of the techniques for any portion of your project – background, hand, & heart, or combine techniques or create your own! For each technique we will be using “wet on wet” – where we brush your paper with water, then add our paint. This helps our colors flow and mix around, giving us some really fun effects! Have your watercolors prepared and ready!
Crayons & Watercolor – Use warm or cool color crayons to draw designs or patterns on one of your elements (background, hand or heart). Brush water on your element, going over the crayon designs, then use watercolor paint to fill in your element – the crayons are waxy and will resist the watercolor!
Salt & Watercolor – Wet your element by brushing it with water, then dab splotches of watercolor on top! Watch as the paint flows and mixes on the paper! While the paint is still wet, sprinkle a little bit of salt on your element – notice how the paint pools around the pieces of salt! Let your element dry completely and then gently brush off the salt pieces to reveal the finished technique!
Plastic & Watercolor – This technique is made by using a plastic grocery bag – you may need to cut the bag open so it’s bigger and can cover your whole paper surface! Wet your paper with water and then add color to paper – in the example below we dabbed color on the paper but you can use almost any method for this technique! Once you have your whole piece of paper covered with color, and while it’s still wet, place your piece of plastic over the wet paint, pressing gently, and being sure to “scrunch” or “crinkle” the plastic on your paper. Let this dry completely (this can take some time!) and then remove the plastic to reveal a very cool technique!
Once you have all your elements painted, let them dry completely – it’s best not to use a hair dryer to speed up the process for the salt or plastic techniques as it may not allow the techniques to work well. When they’re dry and ready, remove the tape and cut out your hand and heart! Glue all of your elements together! Turn these into cards or pictures for Valentine’s day!
