Art Class for Kids & Beginners: How to Draw & Watercolor Paint an Arctic Fox in the Snow

1. Introduction and Supplies You Will Need: Hi friends, how are you? I hope you're having a great day today. I'm excited about sharing this project with you. This is a drawing and watercolor painting project that I designed especially for kids. Students do not need to have any drawing or painting experience at all to be successful with this project. I will guide students step by step through all the steps that they need to take. Today we are going to be creating this Arctic Fox. Let's talk about the supplies and the materials that you will need for this project. The first thing that you'll need is a sheet of watercolor paper. You will need a set of watercolor paints and a paper brush. I like to use this size pat brush, but just use what you have available to you. You will need a cup or a bowl with clean water. You will need a black oil pastel or a black crayon. A white oil pastel or crayon. You will need a handy dandy paper towel. Go ahead and gather all of those supplies and materials. I will see you back here in the next video. 2. Step 1: Draw an Arctic Fox Design: In this step, we're going to draw our Arctic Fox design. Let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is pick up our black oil pastel or crayon, and we're going to find the middle of our piece of paper. The middle of my piece of paper is about right here. This is where we're going to start. First line, which is going to be the top and sides of our Arctic fox head. All right, We're going to start about here, We're going to end up about right here. I'm going to start here, I'm going to come up with a curve line, and then I'm going to come down, do you see how I did that little tiny curve right here at the end of each side of the line? Those are going to be the cheeks of our Arctic fox. Now we're going to connect this line, this side of the line, to this side of the line with a curve line. Curve line like this. There we go. It doesn't have to be perfect. And it doesn't have to be perfectly even. All right, let's go back up to the top of the head of our fox, and let's make some really big ears. And those are going to be triangles sitting on top at the side, a little bit of the head. Then let's add a little bit of detail inside of those ears. Now let's move down into this area of our design, the fox head and face. Let's add some facial features. All right, so let's start with the eyes. Eyes are going to go about right here. I'm just going to make some small circle eyes. And they're going to be about even sized. If there's a different type of an eye that you'd like to make, you can go ahead and do that. Coming to the middle, down below those eyes, we're going to make a little triangle. That's going to be the nose for our fox, and then a little smile. All right, now that we have our eyes, our nose, our mouth, let's create some whiskers. I'm just going to have those come out the side like this. I just like to make two whiskers. Then what we're going to do is come down here to the body. I'm going to create the body down here underneath the head. We're going to start about right here. We're going to make a slightly slanted line, move over just a little bit and do the same thing on the other side. This is going to be the body of our Arctic fox. Now inside the space right here, we're going to make two front feet and legs. There's one and then there's two, and then a little foot like that. How cute is that? Okay, now what we're going to do is make the back legs and feet come out a little. And then make that little foot come out and make that little foot, it's just a curve line coming out from the body, coming down and creating that little foot. And then the same on the other side. Now what we're going to do is just close up that space. We have a defined area for our fox body. All right. What we're going to do now is we are going to add a tail for our fox. Foxes have those big fluffy tails. You can either choose this side to add your tail or this side. I'm going to choose this side, because I have a little bit more space. I'm going to start about right here, go up, come down, and then come up to a point. And then add another line here, come out, and then come up to that point. Perfect. Now I'm going to add a little bit of detail in this tall, some zigzag lines. Then to add a little bit of detail to the body, I'm going to add some zigzag lines as well. All right. Now that we have our Fox design created, let's make a background for our Fox. The first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to make a place for our fox to be sitting like this. This is going to be snow down here. That's why it's not perfectly straight line. Now I'm going to add a little bit more snow. Jump over the body, maybe go over here. Then I think what I'll do is I will make one more line right here. Go across here like this. All right, let me add a little bit in the background. Maybe a mountain. I'm going to maybe start here, come up and then come down, and then I'll put some snow on that mountain. Can you see what I did? This mountain is in back of the Fox. The fox is in front of the mountain. It's blocking a lot of the mountains. You can't see a lot of the mountain. But this space right here is all going to be mountain. Then I'm going to put something over here, maybe another mountain, maybe a little bit smaller. Go up and then come down. Then the rest of the mountain is behind the fox. And then there's the snow. I'm going to switch to my white oil pastel. You can use an oil pastel or a crayon. What we're going to do now is we're going to add some snowflakes to the background. Just this area right here. Maybe even a couple right here. I'm going to add just some circles. And I'm going to try not to touch my fox with my hand, because black oil pastel can get really smeary. We want to make sure that oil pastel on our fox doesn't get too smeary. I'm just going to add these snowflakes. It's going to be challenging for you to see because we're using white on white. But I did add some dots all around in this space. All right, so when we come back, we will start painting our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to paint our design. Let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to add a drop or two of water into each of our pans of paint. What this will do is it will soften up our paint a little bit. That will make it easier for us to use. I really do encourage my students to take that step because it really does help. All right, now that our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our design. Here we have a small arctic fox. Our fox is going to stay white because Arctic foxes are white. Maybe pink on the inside of the ears. And then we will paint the background for the background. I think I'd like to paint my sky blue and then my mountains purple. And then I will leave the caps at the top of the snow caps white. All right, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put a drop of water into one of my wells and I'm going to add some pink paint. I'd like my little ears to be pretty light pink. That needs a little bit more paint. If you want a really light color, you add a lot of water. If you'd like more vibrant, bright color, then you add more paint. I would also like to add a little bit of pink to my cheek area right here. You don't have to do this part, but I'm going to make a small circle here and a small circle here. I like that because it just breaks up all that white. All right, now I am going to turn to the color black. I'm going to put a little bit of water into another. Well, add a small amount of black. Now, black is a really powerful color of paint. You just need a very small amount. I'm looking to not have a red black, more of a dark gray perfect. Then down here on the feet, I'm going to put some black. Because I noticed that some Arctic foxes have those black feet and a little bit of the leg that and then same on the back. Now I'm going to go ahead and paint the sky and the mountains. All right, friends, I'm finished painting my sky and my mountains. I think that my artwork looks awesome. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.