Watercolor Prints
Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at 10:34AM 
Here’s a great project for your nature journal.
You can use your watercolor paints to make monoprints in your journal.
Select some leaves and flowers. If you are in a park or public place, be sure it’s okay to pick fresh leaves; otherwise, look for fallen leaves that are still flexible.
Paint onto the leaves. Be careful not to leave too much paint on the leaf. The first few you try will be experimental. You’ll learn as you go.
Sometimes a leaf is so shiny it won’t hold paint. Try painting the underside. Does it have a different texture? The underside usually has more prominent veins and might make a better print.
This is what happens when you use too much paint! The print is still beautiful, though.
Carefully lay your leaf on the page. You can just rub the back of your leaf, or you can use a scrap piece of paper to press it flat and rub gently over it.
How many different colors of leaves can you find?
Try mixing your paints to match your leaf exactly.
Is your leaf just one color? You can paint on a mix of colors.
Remember it will take a minute for your prints to dry. You may want to bring along some extra sheets of paper for practicing and for printing on while your journal pages dry.
Don’t forget to write in your journal where you were when you made your prints.
You can bring along guide books to identify plants, trees, and leaves; if you want to, you can label the ones you know.
Enjoy printing in your journal!
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Reader Comments (26)
molly, the sun just came out as we finished this morning -- now we have a gorgeous blue sky.
sarah, we had so much fun making prints yesterday that we were all enthusiastic about doing it again today!
a reminder for everyone - if you are on flickr, you can share your photos here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/campcreekart/
have fun!
I was planning to do "leaf rubbings" with a group of young scouts this week. Instead, I think we will do leaf paint-prints!
megan, good luck with your group! i recommend bringing pieces of (ideally watercolor) paper + maybe some scratch paper for their first prints (while they're in the learning phase). it does take a few minutes for each print to dry. if you use watercolor paper you can put several prints on one big page. watercolor paper is stiff so you don't really need a clipboard, but you'll probably want clipboards if you're using regular paper.
you could always do rubbings and prints -- they could do rubbings while their prints dried. ;^) let me know how it goes!
The leaf rubbing went surprisingly well... light colored crayon on dark tissue paper, and dark colored crayon on light tissue paper worked best. And the tissue paper was thin enough that the details from the leaves came through really well. I remembered what you said about the underside having more texture, so we tried both, and the underside ones came out stunning. The boys loved it.
They cut them out and we arranged them on a big "Thank You" card we are sending to the Champaign National Guard troops who just re-deployed.
Lisa
www.houseofmanyblessings.blogspot.com