Art Class for Kids: How to Draw and Watercolor Paint a Little Fox in the Fall Leaves

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 cute fox who's wearing a scarf during the fall season. 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 paintbrush. I like to use a paintbrush about this size, but just use what you have available to you. You will need a cup or a bowl with clean water. You will need either a black oil pastel or a black crayon and a paper towel. So go ahead and gather all of those supplies and materials. And I'll see you back here in the next video. 2. Step 1: Draw a Little Fox Design: In this step we are going to draw our fox designs. So let's get started. Go ahead and pick up your oil pastel or your crayon. And what we're going to do is we're going to come down from the top of your piece of paper. And what we're going to do is we're going to make a curved line. This is going to be the top of our fox's head. Now we are going to come down from the top of our fox's head with two curved lines that meet. And this will create the fox's head and face right here. Now we're going to make some ears on the top of her fox's head. And they're going to be triangles that are upside-down v's. And let's add a little bit of detail inside of those triangles. Now let's add a little bit of detail onto the inside of this space. Let's make a small nose, a triangular nose down at the bottom. Paper and we're going to fill that in with our black oil pastel or crayon. Then what we're going to do is come to each of the cheek areas and we're going to make a curved line that goes up and then comes down to the nose, goes up and then comes down to the nose. Let's add some eyes. For our fox. You can add any type of eye that you'd like. I'm just going to add some dots here, some large dots, circles filled in. There we go. Now what we're going to do is we're going to create a scarf right here underneath the chin of our fox. So I'm going to make a line down, a line down coming from the side of the chin and then close that up. And then coming out one of the sides, either this side or this side, it's up to you. What I'm going to do is I'm going to make a curved line coming out from this part of our scarf and another curved line that follows along that first curve line. Close that up. And then let's add some lines here for a little bit of fringe on our scarf. Now let's make the other end of the scarf coming down this way. So curved line, curved line. Close that up and add a little bit of French. If you'd like to add a little pattern inside of the scarf, you can go ahead and do that. I think I'll just add some stripes. Stripes on a scar. You can add any type of design that you'd like. If you have space inside your scarf. Now let's create the Fox's body. So I'm going to come down from the scarf and I'm going to make a straight line. And then the other side make a straight line. Then I'm going to make two more straight lines. These are going to be the front legs for Fox. And then I'm going to make some toes. And then I'm going to close up that space at the bottom. My fox is pretty thin. If you're fox is bigger or smaller, or taller or shorter. That's a good thing. We want your Fox to look like you're fox, right? Just like We want my fox to look like my Fox. Alright, now let's go back over here. And this is the back knee. And then we're going to make a foot. Alright, so this is the knee, the leg and the foot. And then this area right here is where my other knee is, but it's blocked. That scarf. So we're just going to go around it like this. Perfect. Alright, let's remember to put a tail on our fox. So if you have your scarf coming out this way, then your tail will be over on this side. And if you have your scarf coming out on this side, then your tail will be on this side. Okay? So to make a tail, I'm going to go up with a curve line. It's almost like a really long ***. Then I'm going to come down and then add a zigzag line. There we go. If your tail is lower, that's fine. If it's higher, it's fine. That's just where I wanted to put my tail. Alrighty. Now that we have our fox completed, what we're going to do is we're going to make the forest floor. So we're just going to make a line and it's not going to be super straight because it is the forest floor. Okay? Now what we're going to do is we're going to make some leaves falling down from the trees above our little fox. Let me show you how I like to make leaves. But you can make any type of leaf that you'd like. Going to start about right here with a slightly curved line. And then I'm going to come up and I'm going to, it almost looks like an arrow in the beginning. And then I just make some zigzag lines until I almost reached the bottom. And then I do the same thing on the other side. That's a very easy way to make a leaf. So these leaves are going to be pointing downwards because they're falling off the trees. Okay, So let's go ahead and make a few leaves. So I have a slightly curved line, arrow. And then I just do my six sack lines, zigzag lines, just like that. Remember if there's a different type of a leaf that you'd like to make. Go ahead and do that. I'm going to make one here. They're not going to be really close together. Zigzag, zigzag, zigzag. Maybe I'll make some down here. Arrow zigzag, zigzag. My stem on this one needs to be a little bit longer. There we go. 12. Maybe I'll make one here. Arrow zigzag, zigzag. It's okay if they're not all the same sheep. Maybe I'll make one more here. So just take a look at your artwork and you get to decide where you'd like to put your leaves. I think I'd like to put some leaves down here at the bottom on my forest floor as well. So I'm going to go ahead and do that. There we go. I think I'm really happy with the placement of all of my leaves. So I have some leaves coming down from the trees above. And then I have some leaves that have already landed on the ground. I think I want to actually add one more right here. Sometimes when I look at my art work, there are things that I want to add, little drawings and I just do it. You don't think too much about it. I just do it because I think that I looked nice. Alright, if you do have oil pastels on your hands, that's a normal thing. Just go ahead and take your handy-dandy paper towel. Get as much off as you can of the oil pastels. If you don't get all of your oil pastels off of your hands, that's okay. That's normal because they usually don't come off all the way. Just do the best that you can. If you're using crayons, that usually doesn't happen as much. Actually, my oil pastel broke as well as I was creating one of these leaves. And that's normal as well. Because oil pastels are really soft and they're made with oil, they will break very easily. So when we come back in the next step, we are going to paint our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step we are going to paint our design. So 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 pan of paint. And what this will do is it will soften up our paints a little bit so they will be easier for us to use. So I do encourage my students to take that step because it really does make things a lot easier. Here we go. Now that our pizza or softening up, Let's turn our attention to our design. So here we have a little fox with this scarf on getting ready for the fall. The temperatures are cooling down. And so he is enjoying this fall day. The leaves are falling on him and that's what happens with leaves a lot of times in the fall. So it almost looks like the leaves are raining on him, right? He's having a great time. So when we're thinking about the colors for our design, Let's think about the fall colors which are red, orange, yellow. If you want to use a little bit of green and brown, and maybe even some blue for the sky. It's completely up to you. But what we're going to do is focus on the fall colors because our fox is a reddish brown color. And then we have our leaves that are falling off of the trees. And they're usually brown, maybe orange, a tinge of red and some yellow. You get to decide on the colors of the leaves. Let me show you how to make the color of our fox. So we're going to put a small amount of water into one of our pans of paint. We're going to add some red. And then to this red, we're going to add some brown, a small amount of brown. And this will create a color that is a brick red. It's not a really true bright red. Brick red. So that's nice. I might even want to add a little bit more brown. Little bit more brown. There we go. So I'm going to paint the upper part of my fox's face, but the lower part, I'm going to leave white. Alrighty, there we go. Now we have our fox painted. What we're going to do next is we're going to paint our scarf. So I'm going to choose I want to stay within those fall colors. So I think I'm going to use some orange and maybe a little bit of brown, orange and brown. There we go. Now I'm going to paint my leaves. So I'm going to paint them, some of them orange, some of them brown, and some of them yellow and maybe even mix a little bit of color together. Alrighty friends. As you can see, I have some brown leaves, I have some yellow and orange leaves, and I have some red and orange leaves. I like the way that those colors look when they're mixed together a little bit. So now we have all of our leaves painted, we have our fox painted and our foxes scarf. What we're going to do in the next step is paint the background. 4. Step 3: Paint the Background: In this step we are going to paint the background. So let's get started. You get to choose the colors that you would like to use to paint the background. That would be this sky and the ground, the forest floor that the fox is sitting on. I'm going to use a light brown for the forest floor and then a light blue for the background. But you get to choose the colors that you'd like to make a light brown. I'm just going to add more water to this brown right here. And that should lighten it up and make it really pretty light. Test it out. I think I'd like it a little bit lighter than that. I'm going to go ahead and mix more water in. Remember, if you'd like a color to be lighter, you add more water. If you'd like a color to be darker than you add more paint, remember to push your paint around. You don't need to paint one area over and over and over again. Go ahead and feel free to push that paint around on your piece of paper. Alrighty friends. So I'm going to speed up this video. And I will see you back here in just a minute. Already friends, I'm finished painting my design. I'm very happy with the way that it turned out. I hope that you have a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.