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Watercolor Flower Doodles– Easy & Fun!

I hope you are having a good summer.  I have spent some time doodling with watercolors, my favorite artsy thing to do.  Today I am going to show you how I transform puddles of watercolor to flower doodles.  Here is an example of a finished watercolor flower doodle. This step-by-step is fun, summery art project for you or your kids to try.  I like to share what is fun and exciting for me, because maybe you will take something from … Read more…

Watercolor Animals with 5th and 6th Grade

With all the fancy projects an art teacher can find on Pinterest, sometimes it’s good to go back to the basics.  Simple drawing and painting of familiar subjects.  This week my students drew art manekins.  You could see much more concentration in the students than while doing other projects.  I was looking through the folders on my computer and found these animal watercolor paintings my students had made last year. For more watercolor lessons, check out these old posts: How … Read more…

Art with Letters and Words: Painting over Adhesive Letters

Age Level:  Kindergarten/First Grade Learning Objectives:  Learn how artists can use letters and numbers in art Use overlap Identify and use shapes Develop fine motor skills by tracing and painting Materials Board Mate Repositional Paper Letters/Numbers Board Mate Jumbo Reuseable Stencils Other assorted stencils of your choice Painter’s Squeeze ‘n Brush paints (or other tempera paint of your choice) Watercolor paints, brush, water or brush markers White cardstock or thick paper Process:  1.  View and discuss artworks that have words … Read more…

3 Art Projects Using Leaves

Summer is the perfect time to create art with your child.  Nature provides endless inspiration for art.  Here are three fun art activities using leaves that you can do with kids or just on your own! This post was created as part of the Elmer’s Crafty Bloggers team. Learning Activity Topic:  Using nature to inspire art Educational Foundation: 1.  Identifying and sorting items from nature 2.  Using shapes and variety to create a composition 3.  Learning about negative and positive … Read more…

Masking with Watercolor

  Hi friends! First of all, have you entered my BIG FUN ART TEACHER giveaway?  If not, go to this blog post or the Facebook page to enter. Today’s blogpost is a cross-post.  This week I was a guest blogger on Marit’s Paper World for her Quirky Dutch Summer series.  In case you missed it, I thought I would share it here as well.  This is a fun and easy technique you could try with your students. Masking with Watercolor … Read more…

Inspired by Artist Justin Vining: Abstract Whimsical Landscapes

This may have been my favorite unit we studied all year!  We looked at the whimsical landscapes of contemporary artist Justin Vining.  Here is one of his paintings: We watched videos of him talking about his influences, watched time lapses of his paintings and emailed him some questions about himself.  He responded to our questions in this interview I posted previously.  This was a perfect artist to study for us because Justin lives in Indiana in a rural area and … Read more…

Painting on Cloth | 3rd Grade

Painting on cloth gives such nice, soft colors and is a challenging change from painting on paper.  We tied our lesson into African Korhogo cloth painting and you can read about this project in previous posts here. We used unbleached muslin cloth and regular watercolor paints (Crayola or Prang.)  The kids drew their design on paper first, then put the paper under the muslin.  You can see the lines through the cloth.  Then, they traced the design onto the muslin … Read more…