Trying watercolors without sketching with pencils and pen first

Mostly, I have my students get a picture ready by first using pencils to get an outline and then filling in what they would like to color with a felt tip pen. This creates more of a "paint by number" situation that you might remember from when you yourself were a child. These books that existed way back when encouraged me to get involved in art and I think it did for a great many other people as well. It wasn't really all that creative but it did give someone an easy way to get a head start on painting without the frustration of starting from scratch.

At some point though, I like the students to experience what it is like to "free hand" a watercolor because generally speaking the method that I teach of outlining the painting first and then simply trying to paint inside the lines isn't seen as art. Now I don't consider that a fair assessment because ANYTHING can be art depending on the eye of the beholder, but I don't make all the rules.

Just to give the kids a chance to see how different it actually is when they paint without making an outline first we will eliminate the pencils and pens from the picture every now and then and see what we come up with.

We still use a point of reference when we are doing this and I provide several pictures for them to base their work off of if they want. Some of the more advanced and motivated students will choose to just paint from a memory that they have and this is where I get really excited.

This was done freehand by a 12 year old female student and I was particularly impressed with this. I think that most people that are familiar with the other style that I encourage will be able to easily see the difference between this work and the ones where we first do a sketch outline.

For one thing, when someone doesn't use a pencil to make an outline we end up with far fewer straight lines and sometimes this results in a more surreal looking work at the end. To me, and the way I explain it to the students in a way that they can understand is that with the pencils it is more like real life whereas without the pencils, their art looks more like a "dream."

Most of the students initially prefer the method of using the felt-tip pens and pencils because they have the chance to correct any mistakes whereas with no outline, "mistakes" can be something that you just have to live with and work around as you go along. There is no right and wrong here though, the artists, whether young or old, can choose to do whatever they want and in the end this should be an enjoyable experience otherwise why bother doing it at all?

I heard a lot of moaning while we were doing the pictures without any sort of pencil assistance and it is something that I can definitely relate to. Gathering the skills necessary to make an accurate piece of art even of something as simple as a landscape can be very difficult to pull off when all you have are brushes and a canvas but these are the stepping stones that we must walk over on our pathway to acrylic and eventually to oil paints.

There were a lot of laughs during this project and even a few tears as students got a bit frustrated. I never force the students to do anything they don't want to, so many of the students had returned to using the pens and pencil before the 90 minutes was up. This is perfectly ok because the first rule of art club is not that there is no art club, it is that this needs to be a process that you enjoy and if using the pens and pencils makes it a more enjoyable experience for you then I say USE them!

I just think it is very interesting how different the two can end up looking even though we are using the same materials and medium to complete them.

By the time we were done the students could see the very real difference between the two styles and once I explained the "dream" look of the free-hand paintings a lot of them could start to understand how both ways are great ways to make art and that they should pursue what makes them happy.

The whole idea is to experiment with many different types of ways of making paintings and we will always explore new options in the hopes that we figure out where any student's true talent lies. You never know these things until you stumble upon them!