Watercolor Peacocks

Students in grades 1-3 created these realistic watercolor peacocks! We began by drawing out the peacock in pencil step by step. Once the drawing was complete, we outlined the drawing with cool colors (blue, green and purple). We looked at pictures of real peacocks in nature to see the colors and textures of all the feathers. We then painted the peacocks using cool colors, however students could choose to paint the eyes of the tail feathers with a warm color. Last, we stamped lines in the back feathers to recreate the texture of a real peacock.

Skeleton Drawings

These skeletons started as a practice in drawing positive and negative space. Students had to carefully examine the spaces in between (the negative space) as well as the bones (the positive space). After two classes, students began to add detail and value to the bones. To fill in the background space, I demonstrated how to use watercolor paints for a crayon resist. I let the artists decide how they wanted to paint the background. This is a great drawing project to teach the principles of positive and negative space as well as value.

Self-Portraits with Names

Students in grades 4-6 created these self-portraits with watercolor paint. We began by drawing half of a face in pencil. I taught the students accurate proportions in the face. When the face was finished, students would fill the other half of the page with their name in large block or bubble letters. I also provided some examples of graffiti style fonts for the more advanced students. The face and names were then traced over with crayon before being filled in with watercolor paint. We learned how to use more or less water to create lighter and darker skin tones. This was a new twist on self-portraits that easily add a nice element of personality.

Rockets in Space

Students in grades PreK and Kinder created these fun outer space artworks. We began by using watercolor paints to blend colors together. During the next class, we traced circles over this painting and cut those out to create planets. These were glued to a black paper and white dots were added for stars. The final class students cut out simple shapes like rectangles, circles and triangles to create the rockets. This was a fun project that connected to the elementary science curriculum.