Art Lesson for Kids & Beginners: Drawing and Watercolor Painting a Cat with a Valentine

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 little kitty cat holding an envelope with a heart sticker. I hope that you have a lot of fun with this project. Let's get started. 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. You will also need a cup or a bowl with clean water and a black oil pastel or 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 Cat Design: In this step, we are going to draw our design. So let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is pick up our oil, pastel or crayon, and we're going to make a rectangle right here in the center of our piece of paper. It's going to be a medium size rectangle. So let me show you what I mean. We'll start about right here. Make a straight line. Now we're going to come down with another line and then another line. And then we're going to close up that rectangle by making a line down here at the bottom. This is going to be our envelope. Let's put a heart in the center. This is going to be our heart sticker. And then we're going to create two lines. We're going to create two diagonal lines, one from the corner of this letter to the heart. And then one from the corner of this letter to the heart. Now you can tell that it's a little letter that is sealed with a heart sticker. Alright, now that we have our letter, let's go ahead and let's make our little kitty cat because our kitty cat is holding our letter. Alright. So let's start here above our letter, and we're going to make a circle, starting a little bit in from the end. We're going to come up, come over and come down. Like that. All right. Let's make some little cat ears. Those are triangles. And then let's make a face right here in the center. So I'm going to make some eyes. I just like to make some big dots. But you can make any type of eye that you like. I like to make my dots roughly the same size. So sometimes it takes a little bit of back and forth. Those are a lot different shape. There we go. Make them a little bit bigger. They're more of an oval shape. Okay, now what we're going to do is we're going to make a little triangle nose. And then a little smile coming out from the bottom of that triangle nose. Now I'm going to make some little cheeks. I'm going to make some cheeks, but you don't have to do this part if you don't want to. I just like the way that this looks. Now let's make some whiskers coming out from the side of our cheeks. I just like to make two or three short little whiskers. First going to put some little hands here. Maybe some little lines for the toes because this cat is holding onto the letter. So let's move down here to underneath the letter, and we're going to make just a small part of the body of our cat. And then we're going to make some legs and feet, and they're going to be very, very simple. So this is just a curve line on either side. And then I'm also going to make some straight lines for the toes. So if there's anything else that you'd like to add to your cat, you can go ahead and do that now if you'd like to add some decorations to the letter or I think I might make a small crown on the top of my cat's head. I'm not quite sure if you can see the top of my cat's head, so I'm going to show you how I'm going to make a crown. So let's pretend like this is the top of my cat's head. I'm just going to make line coming up, line coming up, and then a zigzag line like that. That's what I'm going to do for the top of my cat's head, so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Not quite sure if you can see that because it's pretty close to the top of my piece of paper. Okay. If there's anything else that you'd like to add, maybe a bow or something on the leg, it's completely up to you. Now let's think of something that we can do. We can put our cat onto some sort of a floor or the ground. I think I'm just going to put my cat onto the grass, so I'm just going to make some wavy lines like this. And then down here at the bottom, I think I'm going to add some nice big daisies. If there's something else that you'd like to put down here at the bottom, you can go ahead and do that. You can make some little bugs like lady bugs or aunts. Let's see. I'll make another one right here. Sometimes when I'm making grass, I make these little lines like this, and this is how I represent the grass for some little lines. Alright, I think that I am finished. If you have room, you can even put some clouds in the sky if you'd like, or something else. You can add some flowers down here. But I think I'm finished because I think mine looks great, as is. When we come back, we will start adding some watercolor paints to our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to paint our kitty cat. So let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we are going to add a drop or two of water into each of our pans of paint. And what this will do is it will soften up our paint a little bit so that it is easier for us to use. I always encourage my students to take this step because it really does help. Now that our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our design. So we're going to keep our focus on painting our kitty cat in this step, and then in the next step, we're going to paint the background. So for right now, we're just going to focus on painting the cat, right? So let's keep this envelope white. You can paint the heart whichever color you like. You can paint the cat, whichever color that you like, as well. I'm going to paint my cat brown, and then the dress maybe a red or a pink color. And then the crown, I think I'm going to paint that yellow. So what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to prepare some brown paint. I'm going to put some water into one of my wells, and then I'm going to add some brown paint. I'm just going to add more water than paint. Maybe a little bit more brown. I'm kind of running out of the brown here. But I think I'll have enough for this design. Okay. That's perfect. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and paint this kitty cat brown. Alright, friends, I'm back and I finished painting my kitticap brown. I painted this crown yellow because that's the closest to gold that I can get. Then I painted the cheeks and the heart and the little dress pink. And I made a little bit of gray for the nose. I thought that that would look great. So I took just a little bit of water, and then I put it into one of my wells, and then I added a little tiny bit of black paint, not too much, just a little. Now what we're going to do is in the next step, we are going to start painting 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 paint your background. I think I am going to paint my background sky blue, and the grass green. And I'm not sure on the colors on the flowers. I'm going to think about that. Sometimes I choose a color, and then I change my mind, and that's okay. If you change your mind, that's alright, as well. So I'm going to start with the color blue and just start painting. I'm going to try to stay out of my other colors that I've already painted on the cat. But if my colors blend a little bit with some of the colors on the cat, that's okay. Watercolor paints, they love to spread around, and I know that. So I know if that happens, that's okay. Alrighty friends, I'm finished painting my design. I'm really happy with the way that it turned out. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time. Okay.