My son Gabriel came home from middle school last week with an art assignment; to paint a Loretta Grayson style color theory tree. The project seemed a little daunting, so I offered to do one alongside him. Together we looked up Loretta Grayson’s web page and discovered that she had an on-line tutorial explaining how to complete this project.

We’d been told to use water medium paints for our own project, versus the Caran D’ache oil pastels used by Loretta, and soon discovered that it was much harder to create clean crisp squares with watercolor paints. However, we decided to embrace the difference, believing that our fluid lines would make our work unique. Intrigued by Loretta’s use of Zentangles my son asked if he could also incorporate them into our trees. I thought that was a great idea. After four hours of painting, my son’s project was  complete.

He did an amazing job! I am so proud of him. I love his use of vibrant colors and fun Zentangle patterns!

My own project took a little longer to complete since I painted it on a considerably larger piece of 140 lb. watercolor paper.  It reminds me of the stained glass windows which decorated my childhood church, and that makes me feel a little nostalgic.

All in all, it was a fun day.  I enjoyed the art lesson, but most of all, I loved spending time with my son.