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Watercolor Spirals

I hope the beginning of your school year is going well. Mine is going fine. We are getting back into the swing of things around here. Here is a fun and meditative art project good for kids and adults of all ages. You can tie this in to labrynths, mazes and mandalas. I use all different kinds of watercolor paints. I have a whole collection! One of my favorites is the Prima Marketing Confections sets. There are a number of … Read more…

Notre Dame Watercolor and Ink Drawings

Notre Dame Watercolor and Ink Drawings

I realize I had never shared these amazing Notre Dame watercolor and ink drawings my 4th and 5th grade students made at the end of last year. We learned about the architecture of the building and the kids used watercolor and Sharpie pen to create these beautiful pictures. This technique can be used with any architectural lesson or perhaps a lesson on Medieval gargoyles.

Watercolor Circles- Expressive Faces or Flower Doodles

Watercolor Circles- Expressive Faces or Flower Doodles

I haven’t posted much lately because I’ve been focusing on other things– I’m in charge of the cookies for our Girl Scout cookie sales and that is like a part-time job! Also, I’ve been getting ready for my presentation at NAEA. If you are going to the NAEA conference, let me know.. I would love to meet up with new people! I have a lot of fun art journaling exercises prepared, including this one- using watercolor circles as a launching … Read more…

Fall Still Life Paintings with Kids

My third, fourth and fifth grade students just finished up these gorgeous fall still life paintings. Over the years I have built up a collection of fall decorations, artificial leaves, pumpkins and gourds.  I also brought in some real pumpkins and gourds as well.  If you want to do some seasonal art and still have solid art standards covered, observational drawing is always a good go-to lesson. For this project, we talked a little about arrangement and composition, which usually … Read more…

Creating White Space with Watercolor Resist Pens

Today I’m going to share with a fun technique for older kids or your own personal art journaling/painting.  I picked up the Christine Adolph watercolor resist pen from Paper Source, but you can find it on Amazon here (affiliate link.)  I thought it would be fun to try out.  Watercolor resist works by covering the paper and protecting the area underneath.  You can paint right on top of the gummy resist lines.  When it is all dry, you can peel … Read more…

Watercolor Sharks and Free Shark Drawing Guide/Coloring Pages

Recently, I reviewed the book How to Survive as a Firefly and showed you a firefly art project to go along with the book.  I also received a free copy of How to Survive as a Shark from Innovation Press.  This book is illustrated in a similar style and is very cute and engaging.  There is a lot of great scientific information about sharks in this book. From the publisher’s description:  How to Survive as a Shark provides a unique take on fish … Read more…

Kindergarten Watercolor Shapes

I am always trying to come up with new ideas for my youngest students to experience painting in a successful way, learn about important art concepts and still be able to use their creativity. In this lesson, the goals were the following: Students will… Practice using a paintbrush properly. Learn about the qualities of watercolors through instruction and exploration. Experiment with watercolor resist. Be able to identify common shapes such as circle, diamond, triangle, trapezoid, star, square, oval, rectangle, heart and … Read more…