Tag Archives: watercolor

Capstone Blog Post #1 – Choosing a Topic

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When I started my Capstone research, I had not thought it through enough. Before choosing “watercolors” as my topic I had considered researching WW ll. But I wanted to do something else, so I changed it! I really like my new topic because it has many cool and surprising facts in it, and I can imagine that it’s hard to do all the steps to paint on silk. 

Silk painting takes a lot longer than painting on paper because on paper you can’t really see small mistakes as you are drawing. On paper, if you make a mistake you can always erase it, while on silk it’s a bit complicated. The silk might crumble a bit, and then it may rip if you try to erase a mistake. A lot more could go wrong with silk. Especially since painting on silk has so many steps to it. Some silk paintings even take YEARS to make if they are big and super detailed, when painting on silk remember that it is very fine materials and details are especially used. 

Now since we have machines to print. We don’t use our bare hands to make things anymore, so you can tell how much work was put into some silk pieces from China. Most dresses are hand made, you can search that up and maybe find how people harvest, dye, and sew silk.

Capstone Blog Post #2 – Interview

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In 5th grade near the end of the year, all students have to do a Capstone project based on what we were interested in.  My Capstone is going well. My topic is watercolors and my main inquiry question is, “What are the main steps in using watercolor and watercolor pencils on fabric?”

One challenge with my research is finding a website with information on my topic. All the websites that the school knows don’t have this topic. I have to use five resources for my research but I could only find two websites with good information.

My interview really helped with my research. I interviewed my painting teacher who last year taught me how to paint traditional Chinese paintings. She gave some very interesting information that I thought could never be on my topic!  One amazing thing I learned it that are so many people who dedicate themselves to this art style. Another cool thing I learned was that the traditional way has more than 70 steps!  Some people just print the design. Others, (most) still paint the traditional way because they know it shows more skill, talent, and dedication. 

In the 3rd century BC, silk was used as paper. They of course didn’t know how to make paper so they used silk when it first discovered. Silk was discovered when a queen was eating lunch outside. At the time people wore animal skin. The queen was eating when a silkworm’s cocoon fell into her cup. She picked it from the water with her chopsticks and thought it could make some cloth. After that, her people started to harvest silkworms and turn them into cloth. People from Europe started coming, and then the Silk Road was formed. It would take about a year or so to get to China from Europe. Of course, it cost a lot of money, so only rich people were able to make the journey.