Sample Lesson

A Painting Activity

On wet paper, paint the glowing yellow moon with a yellow ring around it that begins to flow together. A slight touch of watery red is added on the fringes of moon’s ring to provide a bridging color to the deep blue-violet of the sky. Allow the yellow to stream out into a pathway running in a long diagonal across the page. With the # 20 brush, put layers of violet in the upper portion of the page and dark blue in the lower portion. Be careful to leave a place for the hall to stand, and avoid letting the blues and violets touch the yellow. The hall is painted in red and a little bit of red can also fall on either side of the path of moonlight. As the paper begins to dry, one can begin to paint in the dark silhouettes of trees and the window and doorway of the hall with a detail brush. Notice that the hall and the trees cast dark shadows on the ground. This is a good time to deepen the sky with another wash of blue violet and to let some of the violet wash over the path of yellow dulling it some so that the moon will be the brightest place on the page. Shadows can be deepened with more washes of blue. Finally when the painting is drying, the silhouette of the Grendel can be added.