Levi's first watercolor painting

This was Levi's first ever watercolor painting, done at age 6.

I thought he might like to try watercolors so I just told him to think about something he would like to paint. I think that he chose birds because he was sitting at the dining room table and we get a lot of birds in the trees just outside.

I instructed him to draw lightly on the paper with a pencil so that he would know where to paint. If I remember correctly I also encouraged him to add leaves to his branches, but other than that he came up with the composition on his own. When it was time to paint, I gave him a few pointers about mixing colors and about wetting the paper first if he wanted the color to flow more in some areas.

As kids will do, he gave me quite an explanation of his picture when he was done. He was sure to point out that the father, brother and baby boy birds were the brightly colored birds and the mother and baby girl were the brown birds.

Thank goodness I had scanned his art right away as the original is quite faded now. I learned the hard way that watercolors fade quickly when they are in the bright light.

Levi was awarded a blue ribbon at our county fair in 2008 for this painting.

Sharon

Hearts inspired by Jim Dine

After seeing many beautiful hearts inspired by the work of Jim Dine as I cruised the blogs last week I just KNEW I had to do some with Levi. I must say he wasn't thrilled about doing a heart but went along with the project and then enjoyed the process.

I cut a heart from a piece of file folder and then traced it onto the center of a 7.5 inch square of watercolor paper. Then we used crayons to layer our colors on for the hearts. We layered cool and warm colors. I just kept piling the layers on mine, trying to fill in most of the little divets in the paper. We used an old rag to buff the surface so that you couldn't see individual crayon strokes. Mine got pretty glossy because of all the layers of crayon.

Then we added the watercolor background. I used some rubber cement to mask areas of my background between colors. Levi chose to just layer up his colors. We created the idea of movement with our brushstrokes. Lastly, Levi added the black outline to bring definition back to his heart. I matted them onto black and then white to fit a 10x10 frame. (I thought I had bought 8x8 frames, but found out they were larger so added the white.)





I love the way they came out and will proudly display these in our home.

You can look at some of the sites that inspired me to do this project:

• Art Projects for Kids
• another from Art Projects for Kids
• Use Your Colored Pencils
• another from Use Your Colored Pencils
• The Elementary Art Room
  

Sharon

The painting that got us fired up again

Papa Richard had hip replacement surgery last Thursday. The day before he went to the hospital I got out painting supplies and had Levi paint a picture. I gave him a choice between doing a bug, fish or flower. He chose to do a dragonfly type bug. He lightly drew the outline onto the paper and then painted it in with acrylic paints, filled the background with lots of short strokes for texture and then added the thick black outlines. I really like how he used highlights.



After the painting was dry I scanned it and then used Photoshop to add a black background and the text. Then I uploaded my file to the Walgreen's down the street and ordered 4x6 prints. I picked those up a couple hours later and layered the photo to some coordinating papers to make the finished card. Papa (and Grams) LOVED the card! I also loved the painting and ordered 11x14 prints at Costco so we could both hang it in our homes.



It was while Levi was painting this bug that my friend, the teacher, stopped by. Our conversation about children's art led me to the various blogs and web sites (mentioned in my first post) that sparked my excitement for what I could do at home with Levi.

Sharon