neutral color trees...

Browsing through Flickr one day, I came upon a project that incorporates using neutral colors. I thought it was really neat looking and gave it a whirl. They turned out awesome!!

Students started with a 12x12" white paper, drew a simple straight line border around the paper, and filled in with a variety of sizes of circles. Next, they created the rings that you would find when a tree has been cut down.

Using black crayon, the students colored in all of the open space that was left around the circles. They also used a variety of neutral colors to trace around the circles and rings.

Now is the fun part - mixing colors with watercolor paints! After demonstrating ways to create neutral colors with brown, black, orange and yellow, the students began painting.

The crayon acts as a resist, so the students didn't have much trouble with the colors bleeding together. When one neutral color was created, they could use that color over and over again around their paper.
After the circles and rings were all painted in, the students chose one color - any color - to paint their border with. Check these out...