Watercolor Mosaics - An Introduction to Watercolor Techniques

Thanks to Make a Mark Studios for the idea, I decided to teach watercolor techniques to my Art 1 students via this assignment! I've included photos and videos showing my process and how you might teach this to your students. Feel free to vary it up according to ages and skill levels and supplies on hand. For my students, they used the following supplies:

• Royal Langnickel - 24 pack of watercolor tubes (2 sets for each of my 6 large tables)
• Round brushes - Fenorkey brand - these brushes are THE best! I tell my students they only need to use one brush for all of their work. They don't shed. And they can hold a lot of water & pigment.
• Table salt
• Rubbing alcohol 50-70%
• Watercolor pencils (Crayola)
• Canson watercolor paper, 9"x12"- this is an excellent heavyweight paper that handles watercolor paint very well
• Water in water cups
• Glue sticks
• Black railroad tag board 4-ply
• Scissors
• #2 pencils
• Stencils & rulers for cutting out shapes

Watch the video above or show it to your class to teach them the 7 techniques outlined below! I do not currently have a video for the tracing, cutting, and gluing parts, but I've included the steps below.

Students started with their 9"x12" watercolor paper. I told students they can use whatever colors they wish, but they should have at least 3 to 4 colors. Students do the following techniques to fill up their paper. Students can keep it non-objective, abstract, or more realistic, but I tell them to keep in mind that we will be cutting up this paper!

---

Watercolor techniques:

• Wet on Wet
• Wet on dry
• Dry brush
• Watercolor pencil
• Salt
• Rubbing alcohol
• Splatter

Once all techniques have been practiced, we let the paintings dry. Next, I have students choose a shape. I told them their goal is to try and get AT LEAST 50 shapes out of their one paper. So their shapes should be approx. the size of a quarter or so. In my case, I chose a circle and used a circle stencil to trace approx. 50 circles on the BACK of my 9"x12" watercolor artwork. 
Then, I used scissors to cut out all of my circles! This part was a bit painstaking, so I took a break every 15 shapes or so. I don't like hand cramps from scissors! While cutting out the shapes, I thought about what kind of final shape I wanted my mosaic to be. A square? A rectangle? A heart? A circle? A hexagon? In the end, I decided upon a circular shape.

Then I signed it using my favorite uniball gel pen in white and called it done!

What do you think of this project for teaching watercolor techniques? Leave a comment below!

Next, I mixed up all of my circles to create more variety and then arranged them on my sheet of 11"x14" black tagboard BEFORE gluing them down. I used UHU glue stick to glue my pieces down once I was satisfied.