Art Lesson for Kids & Beginners: Drawing and Watercolor Painting a Fish for the 100th Day of School

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 using the number 100 100. To create this fish design. 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 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 Fish Design: In this step, we are going to draw our fish design. So let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do to draw our fish design is we're going to write the number 100 100. Pretty big in the middle of our piece of paper. Make sure that when you write the number 100, it's pretty large because we want to add a lot of detail to our fish, okay? So let me show you what I mean. Go ahead and pick up your oil pastel or your crayon. We'll start about right here. And we'll make the number one. That's just a straight line. Now we're going to make the number zero and another zero here. So zero, nice and big. And then another zero next to that one, nice and big. If they're not perfectly round, that's okay. So this is the number 100. Now what we're going to do is we're going to connect this zero to this zero with a curve line. Like this, let me show you. You start right here. We're going to come up with a curve line and then come down and meet right here, okay? So we're going to go way up, come down and end up right there. Alright? Now we're going to do the same thing on the other side. It might not be quite as steep as this line, but we were going to close up the bottom space like this with another curve line. So this is our fish's body, and this is our fish's tail right here. So let's go ahead and make the tail. We're going to connect the top of this line to our fish. Then we're going to make the bottom line as well, like this. So here is the small tail. Let's add a little bit of detail inside of that tail. And then let's create an eye. My fish is going to have a pretty large eye with a pupil. If there's a different type of an eye that you'd like to make, go ahead and do that. Then if you'd like to make a little mouth here like a smile, you can go ahead and do that, or you can do what I'm going to do. And that's going to be make some fish lips like this. I like that type of a mouth for my fish. Now I'm going to go ahead and make a top fin. That's going to be a triangle like this and a small bottom fin like this down here at the bottom. And then I will also create a V right here for the side fin. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to create some details on the inside of my fish's body. And I think I'm going to start right here with this big circle, which was one of the zeros, and I'm going to make a swirl like this. I always like swirls. And then in this space right here and down here, I'm going to just make some circles like this. But you can make whatever you like. You can make any type of design that you like within your fish's body. I've decided I'm going to add a small dot into each of these circles. Now that I have my fish all filled in with some detail, I'm going to make a background. I'll start here at the bottom, and I'm going to make some plants that go into the ocean, some sea plants, maybe some seaweed. Like this. And then maybe I'll make a few rocks down here at the bottom. This is how I make rocks. So a curve line at the top and flat on the bottom, and then connected to another rock. And then I'll close up with some sand like this, and then I'll create some dots, some spread out dots like this. This represents sand. Alright. Now, up here at the top, I think I'm going to make some curve lines that are connected together because this fish is very close to the surface of the ocean. If you'd like to make anything else, maybe like some bubbles, you can do that. And then anything else that you'd like to add to this design, you can go ahead and do that right now. In the next step, we are going to start painting our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Fish: In this step, we are going to paint our fish design. So let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we are going to add one or two drops of water into each of our pans of paint. And what this will do is it will soften our paints a little so that they are easier for us to use. I really do encourage my students to take this step because it does help. Now that our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our design. So here we have our fish that has a lot of detail in it, and then we also have our background. We're going to be focusing on the fish for this step. So we're not going to be painting the background, which is the water and the sand and any plants that you might have outside of the fish. So we're just going to focus on the fish. So think of the colors that you would like to paint your fish. I think I'm going to stick with the warm colors to paint my fish, the warm colors being red, orange, yellow, and maybe even some pink. Okay? So I'm going to start doing that. If you'd like to mix some of your colors together, that would be absolutely fine. This is your artwork, so you get to paint the way that you want to paint. Sound good? Okay. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with the color orange, and I'm going to start painting the body of my fish orange. That's where I'm going to start. And then I'm going to see how I feel from there on the other colors. So you can go ahead and watch me. I'm going to speed up this video while I paint my fish, and then I will see you in just a moment. Alright, friends, I'm finished painting my fish. As you can see, I use the warm colors. I used red, orange and yellow, and I thought I might use pink, but I decided not to because I wanted to stick with those three colors. As you can see, I also added a little dot of yellow here, and it's blending in with that red. When we come back, we will start painting the background. 4. Step 3: Paint the Background: I in this step, we are going to paint our background. So let's get started. So take a look at your artwork and decide which colors you'd like to use for your background. I think I'm going to use the colors blue for the sky and the water, green for the seaweed, and then a light brown for the sand. I'm going to mix a lot of water along with a little bit of brown paint for the sand. Alright, let me show you how I'm going to do that. I'm going to put a little bit of water into one of my wells. Add some brown paint. I want it to be pretty light because sand is fairly light. So I'm going to go ahead and paint that sand. And then with the rocks, I think I will paint those a light gray. So gray, you can make with a lot of water and a little bit of black paint. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and paint the background of my design. I'm going to try to keep my paint off of my fish because I want my fish to stay the colors that I painted them, which are the warm colors, the red and the orange and the yellow. And so I'm going to try to stay off of that fish with my pink colors. Alright, I'm going to speed up this video, and I'll see you back here in just a minute. Alrighty friends, I'm finished painting my design, and I'm really happy with the way that it looks. I used quite a bit of water for my background and just a little bit of paint because I really wanted my fish to stand out on my piece of paper. So I made the colors pretty strong on my fish and a lot lighter in the background. So I used a lot more water with my paint for the background. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time. O