Watercolor Painting with Kids
Watercolor painting with kids is a fun and low cost activity. It’s summer and we are having fun, finding easy things to do at home. Filling our days with water play, pool time, arts and crafts, and more. Using watercolors is such a fun thing to do and it’s something that works for all ages.
My daughter prompted our most recent watercolor art days with her request to paint
My daughter is very interested in art and she recently requested that we paint more. She is 6 and my youngest son is 4. They went to the closet where we store them and got the watercolors out and we set up an old table that needs repainting soon anyway and got to painting.
Supplies
At first, I just let them get started with printer paper, Crayola watercolor paint, and a jar for the water for each child. My jars are recycled Atlas Mason jars from Classico spaghetti sauce, so you can truly use what you have. They used simple paint brushes that we’ve accumulated over the years. We also grabbed the paper towels to help when switching colors or cleaning up spills.
The kids (4 &6) loved it
I’ve allowed them to paint many times before, so they’re familiar with the basics. This time I decided to let them pretty much just go for it at first. They ended up making probably 10-15 watercolor paintings on the plain paper.
The next day, they wanted to paint again. They got the supplies back out and this time my daughter remembered that I had a pad of watercolor paper and grabbed it for us. I let them have a piece of it and also some cardstock and paper. We don’t use the watercolor paper every single time, but I wanted them to have an opportunity to use it too.
I did a quick demo to show them basics
They painted a few more and I demonstrated painting part of a flower and showed the basics of how to wet the watercolor, place water on paper, etc. This quick demo inspired some flower paintings by each of them.
We found a quick & easy tutorial to follow
Next, my daughter requested a tutorial that we could do together. I decided to pull up a YouTube video by Andrea Nelson Art. Specifically, I found this palm tree beach tutorial.
We used what we had and made it work
We needed tape and didn’t have it, so we made it work by just using a piece of paper to block paint at that part. It’s for the part where you separate the sky from the water. You’ll know what I mean if you watch the short linked above.
Painting together was so fun!
My daughter and I had so much fun following the tutorial together. It was so simple and easy to follow. It didn’t take nearly as long as you might imagine. I loved doing watercolors with my kids the other day
My 4 year old sat the tutorial out because he’d already done several on his own
If you’re wondering, my 4 year old was done by the time we did the tutorial and had already done several paintings of his own design.
We discussed horizon lines
We ended up having a nice discussion about the horizon line. I took a picture of her to demonstrate it and also discussed filling up the entire page with color and not leaving white space. Of course this is optional, but often in more professional paintings, even if there is white space, it is painted there, not just left white.
Watercolors are fun and easy to use.
The watercolors were super fun and easy to use. The tutorial made it even more exciting and helped my daughter and I to both create a nice painting.
Taking watercolors to the next level
I just discovered Emily Lex’s watercolor workbooks. I haven’t bought one yet, but they look amazing! I think this is something I may get and try soon. The workbooks have an example of something painted with watercolor on the left side of the open book and on the right side, it’s sketched for you to look at the example and copy the watercolor painting. It looks really beautiful and I think using it would help to hone watercolor skills. I could see it as a great thing to use for homeschool art lessons too!
I recommend watercolor painting with kids as a fun, affordable, and easy art activity.
Watercolor painting with kids is a fun and simple way to teach them art. The supplies are very easy to get and super inexpensive. The paints last for a very long time and can be used again and again .8 highly recommend it as an easy, fun, and inexpensive way to do art with your kids. Find a tutorial you like or try the one we did here. Have fun painting!
