The Daring Book for Girls - Andrea J. Buchanan [113]
Bottled water
If you’re not near a water fountain or a restroom with a sink, bring your own bottled water.
Paper, or a watercolor block, 8½″ × 11″ (good brands include Arches, Fabriano, or Strathmore).
A sharp tool to remove sheets of paper from the block.
A No. 2 pencil and a kneaded eraser.
A towel to sit on, or a small beach chair.
TIPS
Never leave your watercolor brush standing in water—it will ruin the bristles. Instead, keep the brushes on your bamboo mat. Let them dry in the air.
Clean your brushes before adding a new color (especially when changing from dark to light hues).
If you wish to work on a separate sheet of paper rather than a block, use watercolor masking tape to secure all sides and edges of the paper on a board. Not doing so will allow air to get underneath and buckle the paper.
Do not overwork your painting! Wait for an area to completely dry before adding more water or pigment. Too much water can break down the fibers in the paper and make it look too “scrubbed.” As with so many things in life, less is more.
Less water will give you a more opaque, darker color. More water will yield a more transparent, lighter color.
Lightly sketch your landscape or seascape in pencil before starting—you can always erase pencils marks, once the paper is completely dry, with a kneaded eraser. Darker, heavier lines are more difficult to remove.
GREAT WATERCOLOR ARTISTS TO CHECK OUT
Beatrix Potter (19th-mid 20th century British watercolorist)
Sara Midda (contemporary British watercolorist and designer)
Winslow Homer (American, 19th-20th centuries)
Andrew Wyeth (American, 20th century)
John Singer Sargent (American, 19th-early 20th century)
Charles Demuth (American, early 20th century)
Carl Larsson (Swedish illustrator, late 19th-early 20th centuries)
Charles Reid (contemporary American watercolorist)
J.M.W. Turner (British, 19th century)
Albrecht Durer (German, Northern Renaissance)
Phansakdi Chakkaphak (contemporary Thai botanical watercolorist)
Charles Rennie MacIntosh (Scottish, late 19th century)
Making a Peg Board Game
PERFECT FOR CAR TRIPS or rainy days, this ancient logic game is surprisingly easy to make but difficult to master. Traditionally, it is a triangular board with fourteen pegs and fifteen holes. The goal is to jump one peg over another until only one remains.
Needed:
1 flat board of wood, 6″ × 6″ (at least one inch thick is a good size). Any shape is fine; it doesn’t have to be triangular.
14 fluted dowel pins, 5/16/5/16″ × 1½″. Available at any hardware store.
Ruler
Power drill, with a 5/16/5/16″ bit.
Make a dot at the top of the board for your starting point. Lightly draw one diagonal line and then another, marking your triangle on the wood. In addition to the top dot, mark four dots down one side of the triangle, four along the other side, and three dots along the bottom. Draw dots for the middle holes, too. Use your ruler so everything lines up.
You will need adult help with the next power drilling step.
Drill a ½″ hole right where you have drawn each dot. Some people measure ½ inch up the drill bit and put some masking tape on that spot so they can easily gauge the hole, although once you do enough of these, you’ll get the feel of it. Test each hole with a dowel, making sure the dowel easily moves in and out. When all fifteen holes are done, shake out the sawdust, and you’re ready to play.
Handclap Games
HANDCLAP GAMES, or sidewalk songs, are not only fun to play, they are a fantastic oral storytelling tradition. Many of the rhyming, clapping games flirt with grown-up ideas like “bad words,” courtship, and power, and they do so with inventive language, simple songs, and entertaining, sometimes tricky, choreography.
The lyrics and movements to handclap games can vary depending on where a girl lives. Different regions often have different clap sequences or alternate lyrics that become popular with the girls who practice them. Below we’ve included the most