Art for Kids and Beginners: Learn How to Draw and Watercolor Paint a Chameleon in the Jungle

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. You do not need to have any drawing or painting experience at all to be successful with this project. I will take you step-by-step through all the steps that you need to take. C, you will feel comfortable at all times. Today we are going to be creating this cute chameleon. 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 piece of watercolor paper. You will need a set of watercolor paints. You will need a paintbrush and a bowl or a cup with clean water. You will also need a set of crayons or oil pastels. In this project, I'm using oil pastels. Then you'll also need a paper towel. 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 Chameleon Design: In this step we are going to draw our design. So let's get started. What we're going to do is we're going to choose one of our colors from our set of oil pastels or crayons. I'm going to be using oil pastels. But of course, you can use your crayons if that's what you have available to you. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to draw a chameleon. What I'd like you to keep in mind is The Chameleon is going to be pretty large on your piece of paper. It's not going to be a super tiny little chameleon. Think about this. Think about if somebody is looking at your artwork from across the room, they'd be able to actually see your chameleon on your piece of paper. Find the middle of your piece of paper over to the left a little bit. You're going to draw a straight line like this about that long. Now what you're going to do is you're going to draw a curved line coming down. And it's going to stop it at roughly the same spot as this line right here. Then we're going to close that up at the bottom. This is going to be the head of our chameleon. Now what you're going to do is you're going to create a body down here at this space. You're going to touch the head of the chameleon a little bit down from the corner. And we're going to come down with a curved line, curl around. It's almost like we're making a backward C. We're going to make a slight swirl like this. We're not going to go around and around and around because this is going to be our chameleons tail. All right, the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to do the same thing coming out from the bottom here. Go up just a little bit. And then we're going to come across. And then about right here, we're going to turn this swirl into a tail that's going to be pretty pointy at the end. Do you see how I did that? All right. The next thing that we're going to do is we're going to create a face on our chameleons. So we're going to have a circle. Then we're going to create some other features with our black oil pastel. So we're going to wait on creating more features. Now what we're going to do is we're going to put a little bit of detail and some legs onto our chameleon. So let's put some V's, some large fees on his back like this. Then we're also going to put some little spines on his back. And those are just going to be a series of upside-down bees that are hooked together. As we get closer to the tail, we're going to make our little spines a little bit smaller. Now let's create some legs. So just two lines coming down. Then underneath those two lines and upside down letter U. And then close those up. Another one. And then we can make two in the back here. Alright, now we are finished with our green. What we're going to do now is we are going to use some brown for a branch. So go ahead and grab your brown and we're going to make a branch that this chameleon is going to be standing on. Did you see what I did? I made a line and then when I got to a part of the chameleons body, I jumped over that body part in and I continued my line. Then I made another line underneath. And we don't want the line to be perfectly straight because this is a branch. In branches aren't perfectly straight. So it's good if it has a little bit of bumpiness to it. Now what we're going to do is we're going to take our black. We're going to create a pupil. A little smile, and a nostril. Remember the other side of our chameleons face is on the other side, so you won't be able to see his other eye or his other nostril. Now what we're going to do, and if you have any Any black or any other color, oil pastel on your fingers, you can go ahead and use your paper towel to wipe that off. Now what we're going to do is we're going to create a background for our chameleon. We're going to make sure that the background for our chameleon is really, really busy. And we're going to use a lot of different colors and a lot of different shapes. It's up to you as to the colors and the shapes that you'd like to use. And I'm going to give you some suggestions so you can make some leaves, you can make some berries. If you'd like to make some little insects like little bugs or dragonflies, you can do that. Little flies. Just make sure that you fill in the whole entire space around your chameleon. We're not going to create any more designs on our chameleon right now, but we're going to make those background shapes. So I'm going to start out with some blue leaves. I know leaves usually aren't a blue color, but that's what I'm going to choose. Remember, you can also choose to make lines. You can choose to make different shapes. And maybe like swirls or circles or triangles. It's completely up to you as to what you'd like to make. And remember you can use any color that you'd like. What I'm going to do is I am going to go ahead and I am going to just start making different shapes with different colors. My oil pastels. And we're not going to color anything in. We're just going to be making the line drawings. I'm going to work on that. Then you can start working on yours as well. You can watch me first to see what I do because you might get some ideas from me. If you'd like to do that. I will see you back here in just a minute. All right, friends, as you can see, I filled in all of my background space. And when we come back, we will be painting our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: All right, friends, welcome back. In this step, what we're going to do is we are going to be painting our design. So let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we are going to place a drop or two of water inside each pan of paint. And what this will do is it will soften up our paints just a little bit so they are easier for us to use. So go ahead and take a moment to do that. Then let's turn our attention to our design. As you can see, it's a pretty busy design, meaning that there's a lot going on. What we're going to do is we're going to make sure that our chameleon kind of stands out from the background by painting it in green. And we're going to paint the little branch Brown. Other than that, you get to choose the colors that you'd like to paint your background. I would suggest sticking with those bright colors. Because if you add, start adding black and a lot of brown, then the painting we'll get a little bit darker. Alright, so I'm going to start out with my branch and I'm going to start painting that first. Then what I'd like you to keep in mind as you are painting, because we are going to be using watercolor paints today. What happens is that the paints may and probably will start blending together. And that's actually a really good thing. That's what we like about watercolor paints. So they're going to start blending together and make sure that you remember. That's just the nature of watercolor paints. Now, after you paint your branch brown and your chameleon green, the details that we have, these triangles on the tail and on the back. You can paint those any colors that you'd like. But the main part of our chameleon is going to be green. What I'm going to do is I'm going to speed up this video. I'm going to go ahead and paint. You can watch me and it'll just take a minute. And then you can get started on your own. Already, friends, I'm finished painting. I wanted to mention I didn't spend too much time thinking as I'm applying paint onto my piece of paper, I just went with what I was feeling. So if I wanted to paint with orange, I just painted with orange even though a lot of times we don't see orange leaves. That's okay. I just wanted to paint with orange, so that's what I did. If you find that some of your paint is paddling a little bit and you want to bring that paint up if it's a little bit too dark. What you need to do is you need to take your paper towel, hover it over that area. And what that will do is it will bring up the paint. It will soak up the paint a little bit. Alright, I did that in a few areas on my artwork. This turned out to be a really colorful piece of art that I'm really happy with. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. And I will see you next time.