Art Project

My third graders recently finished a painting project using leaves and watercolors. If you have kids at home, teach kids, or just want to try the project, I highly recommend you do it now before the leaves dry up and blow away! It's definitely a project I repeat from year to year because the process is interesting and produces unique results.

Here's how to do it:

Select a color scheme. We talked about analogous colors (colors next to each other on the color wheel), but warm or cool colors work nicely too. They then painted a light watercolor wash on white paper. Leaves, that each student brought to class, were then placed on top of the watercolor wash - veins up. Then they took darker paint colors and painted the edges of the leaves -making sure to overlap the darker color onto the paper. This was left to dry overnight. By the next morning the leaves had absorbed the paint and in the process, left a "print" behind.

Leaves absorbing the paint

Finished painting

Finished painting

Finished painting- the finished paintings look great by themselves OR, they would be an awesome paper choice for future collages.

All the leaves after we peeled them off our papers. How cool do they look? I wish I would have gone straight to the laminator and preserved them -but I was nervous about jamming the laminator (been there, done that).

Happy painting,

SC