Watercolor Wet on Wet Technique, Blue (Waldorf)

They are working with one color at a time for now. This is a heavyweight watercolor paper, soaked about 20 minutes (which is pretty long, created less definition). I provided the kids with three jars of mixed paint, each with a different saturation, and a dish of salt. While they found the effects of the salt to be fascinating, they would continue to paint over the salted areas which dissolved the crystals completely.

What I love so much about the Waldorf methods of watercolor exploration is that the kids focus on the process at hand rather than the final product that results. At first, my 8 year old grew extremely frustrated that he couldn't get the rigid forms he was accustomed to. However, after a few words of encouragement, he began to sink into a trance-like, exploratory state, as if in an open, two-way relationship with the movement of the water and pigment.