ART FOR THE WEEK OF APRIL 20th:

 JAPANESE FLOWER PAINTING

You should be able to do this art project at home if you want to and have time this week.

Materials:  9 x 12" art paper, black watercolor paint, brush, water, scrap paper

1.  Practice on your scrap paper.  Experiment with the paint in different ways, such as using paint that has been mixed with more or less water, applying more or less paint to the brush, pulling the brush quickly or slowly across the page and moving the bush in straight or curved lines.

2.  Take some time to look at the picture above.  You'll paint the flowers using only black paint and any shades of gray you can create b varying the use of water and paint.

3.  You can position the paper landscape or portrait style.  Imagine how the composition will look on the page.  You'll be painting only the flower--no vases, etc. please.

4.  Paint 3, 5, or 7 lines with bold strokes for the branches.  Try to use the whole paper.  Don't layer the paint or paint back and forth.  The branches should look like one stroke, even though you may need to go over them if you run out of paint on your brush.

5.  Add flowers and leaves along the branch to fill in more of the page.  Make the flowers and leaves different shades of gray and black.

6.  Let the painting dry.  If you have some black construction paper at home you could glue your painting onto the black paper so that you have a frame on your artwork.

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