Les Bouleaux, Birch Trees - water colour

I was inspired by this post by Patty at Deep Space Sparkle (the blog that started my passion!) She starts her intro with "Everyone has done a birch tree art lesson. They are such a lovely tree, stripped of their leaves and shimmering with black and white bark." ummm... nope.. never done a Birch Tree lesson.... until now! Now Patty does a little more with her lesson.. like background and foreground trees and textured sky. But I think with grade 2s, we'll stick with the basics! This has been a rather time-consuming project, as I really wanted optimal results.. therefore, I drew the horizon line on each paper, and have been instructing each child individually on how to do the shading for the trees. This, coupled with the fact that I've been off sick for the past week, means that we're a little late in getting the first art project of the year finished! However, I think you'll see that the results are worth the wait.

Step 1: Masking-tape off the "birch trees"

Step 2: paint the sky (they could choose orange/yellow or blue/purple)
Step 3: Mme paints the horizon line
Step 4: Outline the birch trees with a black sharpie

Step 5: Mme helps each one paint their shadows
Step 6: Remove the tape and add some bark detail with a sharpie
Voila!

I'm now working on a Valentine's Day project that I'm SO excited about! I can't wait!!