What Is Veil Painting in Waldorf Education?

Veil painting is a watercolor method for older Waldorf children. You stretch a sheet of paper on a board and brush on thin, watery washes of color one at a time. Each wash dries before the next one covers it. The colors build up in layers, like veils laid one on top of another, and slowly a picture comes out of them. Most Waldorf schools bring it in somewhere between grade 5 and grade 7, after years of wet-on-wet painting.

What is veil painting?

Gail McManus, who trained at the Goetheanum painting school in Dornach, describes it as "a method of painting on dry, stretched paper" where the painter layers or glazes colors one over the other, "often in large, sweeping 'veils'."

Picture a sheet of paper taped flat to a board. Your child dips a wide brush into a jar of pale blue, so pale it's barely there, and lays one soft wash across the top corner. Then they put the brush down and wait. When the paper is dry, a second wash goes on, partly over the first and partly on clean paper. Then perhaps a thin yellow. Where the layers overlap, the color deepens. Where they don't, it stays light.

At Highland Hall Waldorf School, the high school students paint veils "with no preconceived idea, form or drawing." An image rises "out of the color itself," and the painter then brings it out more fully. That's the heart of it. The picture isn't drawn first and filled in. It grows out of the layers.

How is it different from wet-on-wet?

Most Waldorf children spend years painting wet-on-wet before they ever try a veil. In wet-on-wet, the paper is soaked and the colors run into each other as your child paints. It's quick, and the colors mix on the page. The color stories of grade 1 are told for this kind of painting.

Veil painting turns that around. The paper is dry. Colors don't mix on the page; they sit over each other, and you see one through the other. Antoinette Reynolds and Diana Westlake are experienced Steiner class teachers in England. They describe it as a bridge between wet-on-wet and "more conventional water colour painting." The result, they write, is a build-up of color "which creates tremendous depth."

When is veil painting introduced?

Schools differ, and they're open about it.

• Grade 5. Emerson Waldorf School in North Carolina lists "veil painting technique" in its grade 5 art.
• Grade 6. Reynolds and Westlake's guide for class teachers says: "In Class 6 another important painting technique is introduced, known as 'veiling'."
• Grade 7. The curriculum guidance from the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum introduces it in grade 7 as "a new painting technique" and says it's "continued and technically rounded off" in grade 8. In their grade 8 work, children paint the same subject both wet-on-wet and in layers.
• High school. Some schools come back to it later. At Highland Hall, grade 11 students study veil painting in its own block.

The same Goetheanum guidance has grade 6 painting turning toward light and shadow, with a lot of the year's art in charcoal and black and white. So in many schools, veil painting is how color comes back in grade 7, with a new way of handling it.

If you're homeschooling a child in grade 4, there's no need to start. Keep painting wet-on-wet, and let veil painting be something for later.

Why does it wait for older children?

The Goetheanum's guidance names three things veil painting asks of a child: "considerable restraint," "the ability to wait (till the paper or a layer of paint has dried)," and "perseverance." Reynolds and Westlake say much the same. Veiling is "a very slow process, which requires an enormous amount of patience."

A 7-year-old painting wet-on-wet lives in the color while it moves. A 12-year-old can often do something different: lay down a wash, step back, look, and decide what the painting needs next. Around the 12-year change, many children start to think more about cause and effect. In veil painting, every layer changes the ones underneath, and the child has to keep that in mind.

What you need

• Heavy watercolor paper. Around 300 gsm (140 lb), rough or cold-pressed. Painting teacher Pamela Whitman suggests this weight in her notes on veil painting.
• Paper tape. Reynolds and Westlake stretch the sheet with paper tape. For practice, Whitman says a small sheet taped all round with masking tape works too.
• A painting board, a little bigger than the paper. The wet-on-wet board you already have is fine.
• A wide flat brush, about 1 inch (2.5 cm). Whitman also finds a round brush useful for smaller washes later on.
• Watercolor paint, well diluted. If you already use Stockmar paints for wet-on-wet, you can use the same ones. Mix more than you think you'll need before you start. Whitman points out that stopping mid-wash to mix more paint leaves a hard edge.
• Jars and a rag, for rinsing and for catching drips.

How to do veil painting at home

These steps draw on Reynolds and Westlake's guide and Whitman's notes.

1. Stretch the paper the day before. Wet the whole sheet, lay it flat on the board and tape all four edges with paper tape. Leave it to dry overnight. Reynolds and Westlake explain that as it dries, the paper stretches tight.
2. Mix the colors thin. Start with one or two colors, mixed pale. Reynolds and Westlake describe the first coat as "a very diluted wash."
3. Tilt the board. Prop the top edge on a book or lean it against the table edge. Whitman writes that a wash won't flow on a flat board. Paint from the top down in side-to-side strokes, each one slightly overlapping the one above.
4. Lay one wash, then stop. Don't go back into a wet wash to fix it. Let it dry fully, in the same position it was painted.
5. Add the next layer. Overlap part of the first wash and cover some fresh paper too. Reynolds and Westlake suggest starting in the four corners, then adding layers that partly overlap and partly move into new space.
6. Build up slowly. Whitman suggests starting light and adding a little more pigment with each layer. Leave some paper clear so the painting keeps its light.
7. Look before each new layer. Ask your child what the painting seems to want next: more blue at the top, a warm place in the middle. Shapes often start to suggest themselves after several layers.

Whitman also offers a kind word for beginners. Most early "mistakes" get covered by later veils, and they disappear.

Fitting it into your week

A veil painting doesn't fit a single 30-minute slot. Plan for one or two washes a day over a few days, or a longer afternoon with breaks.

Reynolds and Westlake recommend doing another artistic activity at the same time. At home that could be handwork, form drawing or a main lesson book page. Your child lays a wash, sets the board aside to dry, and picks up the knitting. Twenty minutes later, the board comes back.

If a hair dryer seems tempting, Whitman allows it on a warm setting, moved back and forth from the top of the wash downward. But the waiting is part of what the painting is teaching, so you may prefer to let the paper dry on its own.

Where veil painting leads

Veil painting grows out of the same ideas about color as all Waldorf painting. The Goetheanum's guidance for the grades takes its lead from Goethe's writing on color, and many painting teachers talk about color coming from light and darkness meeting. If you'd like the background, Goethe's theory of color explains it in plain words. For the whole path from kindergarten to grade 8, see how Waldorf painting changes by grade. For what else your child is learning in these years, the grade 5 and grade 6 curriculum guides cover the main lessons.

A way to begin

This weekend, stretch one small sheet of paper and let it dry overnight. The next day, mix a jar of pale blue and a jar of pale yellow, both mostly water. Tilt the board and lay one blue wash across the top. Then put the brush down and do something else together for half an hour. When you come back, add the yellow, overlapping the blue at one edge. That's a veil painting started. It will take a few more days to finish, and that's how it's meant to be.