Ms. Amsler's Artroom

Masking Tape Birches: (Winter, Step-by-Step!)

December 2024 Updates: New and Improved!!!!

This Winter Birches landscape has been in rotation for many years in my 7^th grade classroom, and I have just revamped the lesson with wonderful results. First big change: I used to provide only one width of painters tape: ¾”. I made the kids tear the tape to create organic edges to their trees and/or use scissors when making their smaller side branches. The resulting trees were… clunky. The kids had trouble creating elegant and slender trees with naturally tapering branches. New this year: I bought THIS SET of painters tape on Amazon that comes in 5 widths! I no longer make them tear the tape and instead suggest they use varying widths to suggest closer (bigger) trees and thinner tape for farther (smaller) trees.

I’ve also majorly updated my instruction presentation with new videos and more in depth instruction and Goals.

Check out my NEW AND IMPROVED INSTRUCTION PACKET.

Last but not least, good quality watercolor paper is key. I use THIS STRATHMORE PAPER for this lesson. It’s roughly 22.5 by 30” and I use a metal yardstick to measure and tear each piece into fourths, yielding paper about 11 and ¼” by 15”.

Read on for the “How to’s!”

I’ve had such success with this lesson and it adapts well to whatever season you want to depict! Be sure to check out my SPRING version and also my ORIGINAL post which shows some fall themed paintings.

This post will include many of the resources I created to help students be successful when creating these Winter Themed Birch Tree Paintings.

We began by planning out our tree shapes with the masking tape, using the torn pieces to create  natural and organic forms on white watercolor paper. (Tree reference pictures are very important here!) We used watercolor washes to paint the sky, background, and foreground, —right over the tape! Students used a mixing tray to control the paint tones and a proper watery consistency. Wet-into-wet blending of different colors directly on the paper was encouraged to create a natural look. (In the winter-themed paintings, students used specialized techniques such as adding salt or plastic wrap to areas of wet paint to create unique textures.) After the paint was dry, we carefully peeled away the masking tape to reveal the pure white trees.

Using a black colored pencil, we added small branches and horizontal textures for our birch bark. Again, reference pictures help! We added pale watercolor shadows on the trees to help give them form, and, —depending on the desired “seasonal” effect,— other personalized details such as splatters, fences, grasses, animals, footprints, etc.

Here is a basic breakdown of this lesson:

Day 1-2: Create your tape trees

Day 2: Watercolor Exercise

Day 3: Paint the basic background elements of ground and sky.

OPTIONAL: Mist liquid watercolor here and there before putting to dry.

Day 4-5: Remove tape CAREFULLY. (Some ripping will likely occur despite your best efforts— not a problem!) Add bark texture and branches with black colored pencil. Finally, Add tree trunk shadows with a very pale mixture of watercolor!

Students Peeling the tape from their dried paintings.

Day 6: Choose at least two “Bonus Features” to personalize your artwork, such as footprints in the snow, a fence, animals, trees or houses in the distance, etc. As an optional final step, I had a designated area where students could mist watered-down white tempera onto their painting to suggest falling snow.

If time and attention allow, this is a good opportunity to talk about the basics of landscape and perspective with your students, i.e., What is the relative size of two objects in a picture and how can we imply distance and depth?

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RESOURCES: (Some are links to Google Docs, others are PDFs you can download)

Watercolor Exercise Instructions

Birch Tree Reference Pictures

Bonus Features:

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Students were so proud of their creations! If you try this lesson with your students, let me know how it goes!