Wonderful Way's to Experience Monet


 Selection of Claude Monet Water Lilies Series 


Materials Needed
Watercolors
Photos of Water Lilies
Oil Pastels
Watercolor Paper
Paper Towels

Watercolor Brush (I like to use a number 6 or 8 round)

 Drawing pictures of Water Lilies is one of the best ways to appreciate the artist Claude Monet.  Claude Monet built his own Garden in Giverny - and had a pond.  Towards the end of his life he spent much of his time with oil paints painting on huge canvases.  The paintings were of water lilies along with the reflections of clouds in the water surrounding them even the seaweed in the ponds - all at the same time.  His style of art was called impressionism.  It was not precise and exact but rather gave the viewer a hint of reality.  His artworks seem to shimmer with light and atmosphere.  Monet painted other paintings as well, and all were from actual observations of nature and sometimes he did multiple paintings and as the day progressed and light changed he would trade canvas's - painting the same subject matter but at different times of day.  

Take a trip to a lily pond and take some pictures!  Then go home and try your own paintings.  First, give hints of greens in the basic shapes of lilies with the oil pastels.  Remember oil pastels are very soft, you don't need to press hard when forming the lily pads.  Second - add some hints of flowers in some bright floral pastel colors. Notice that with oil pastels you can put one color on top of another.  When you look at Monet paintings up close in real life, they look like blobs and splotches - when you stand back you start to see the lilies - so don't worry about being too precise.  Impressionistic paintings are loose.  The hinted at flowers look better than the tight exact ones.  After doing the Lilly and the lilypad work take your watercolors in blues and purples and add the water.  Work with a very wet brush - you can even wet your paper with water and then dab in the colors, the less color and more water the lighter your pond will be, start out light and work to darker.  Watercolors can be sponged out if it gets too dark - just work it when it is wet or re-wet your work then push on top with a folded paper towel to pull colors back out.  As you paint remember to leave some white areas for clouds and add in some wonderful patches of seaweeds with darker greens. Monet did not use the color BLACK or even DARK BROWN in his work  He mixed his colors on the canvas and if he wanted something darker he placed 2 colors together.  YOUR Work will be WONDERFUL especially if you do the same, don't overwork it, work wet on wet with the watercolors and pick out things that you don't like with the paper towels!