Art Lesson for Kids & Beginners: Drawing and Watercolor Painting a Palm Island and Fish

1. Introduction and Supplies You Will Need: Hi, friends. How are you? I hope you're having a really great day today. I'd like to introduce this project to you. This is a project that was 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 to be successful. I'd like to go over 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 some watercolor paints and a paint brush. I like to use a paintbrush about this size, but if you don't have this size available to you, go ahead and use what you do have. You will need a cup or a bowl of water. You will need 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 Palm Island Design: In this step, we are going to be drawing our design. So what you'll need to do is you'll need to pick up your oil pastel or your crayon, and I'm going to use my oil pastel, but you can use either one. And we're going to start here pretty close to the bottom of our piece of paper. I'm going to go about one quarter of the way up of my piece of paper. So what that means is if I divide my paper in half, then I divide from the half point to the bottom of the piece of paper, I divide that in half again. So I'm going to start about right here. All right, the first thing that I'm going to do is make some waves going across the bottom of my piece of paper. And the way that I make waves is this. I bring a curve line up like this, and then I come down. I bring a curve line up. And then I come down. I have to be honest. This is not the easiest line to create, but if you do it enough times and you practice enough, you will do really, really well at this. So curve line and then come down. Curve line and then come down. Curve line, and then I'm done, and I'm going off the paper. Alright? So those are my waves right there. If you'd like to make a different type of a wave, you can do that, as well. Let me show you cause these can be a little bit tricky. I have a really thin piece of paper here. So if you want to make a wave like this, just going up and down like this, like use like a chain of uses hooked together, you can go ahead and do that, as well. Okay. Alright, it's up to you. Okay, so once we have our waves, what we're going to do is we're going to create a small island. And on our island, we're going to have a tree. So let's create our island, and it's not going to go too much above the waves, but my island's going to be going about that high off of my waves. Okay. So go ahead and make your island. Now, at this point, we're going to put a palm tree on our island. And what we're going to do is this palm tree is going to be swaying just a little bit in the wind because that's what palm trees love to do. So we're going to make two curve lines coming up from our little island. And then after we create our two curved lines, we are going to create our palm frond. So curve line going out, curve line coming back in. Same thing. Curve line going out, curve line coming back in. You might be able to fit a different amount of fronds on your artwork than I do, and that's fine. I'm going to go curve line out, curve line back in. All right? After we create all of our fronds, what we're going to do next is we are going to put a line down the middle of each of our fronds. I'm not sure if you've seen a palm tree in real life, but they have these really thick veins right in the middle like that. And then if you'd like to, if you have space, you can also put some lines like this, add a little bit of detail. All right. Now that we have our palm fronds, you can put some coconuts on there if you'd like. You don't have to have coconuts if you don't want to. And then let's put some Xs down the trunk of our tree to just give it a little bit more detail. Maybe I'll fit one more down here. There we go. All right. At this point, if you'd like to put some little dots for the sand and create the look of texture on your sand. And then if you'd like to put anything else on your sand, you can go ahead and do that. At this point, like, for example, if you want to put a little crap or a shell right here on the sand, you can do that. I'm just going to leave mine without anything on it except for the palm tree. Alright, at this point, let's put a few little fish in the ocean that are swimming around. I'm going to put three or four fish. So to make a fish, a simple fish, you make a straight line for the tail and then a curve line that comes around and then meets back up at the tail. Alright? So that is it. That is our drawing portion of our project. When we come back, we will be painting. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to apply some watercolor paints to our design, and there's one thing that we need to do before we start painting, and that is we need to put one or two drops of water inside each pan of paint. And what that will do is it will dissolve the paint just a little bit, and it'll make it easier for us to use. So I'm going to take a minute just to do that. That's an important step. Alright. After that, let's talk about our drawing. I have decided to paint my design, the pretty typical colors for this type of art project. So what I mean by that is I'm going to use some green for my leaves and brown for my trunk and coconuts. I'm going to make a sand color for my sand island, some blue for the ocean. Not sure what color I'm going to paint the fish yet. I'm going to see how I feel about that when I get to that point. And I am going to paint the background of the sky. I'm going to paint it an orange color because I want it to be a sunset. So at this point, what I'm going to do is I am going to create a color for the sand because I want to show you how to do that. Sand is usually a really, really light color. It's a light color, like a tan color. So I'm going to use just a tiny bit of brown with a lot of water. So I'm going to make that sand color, and it's going to be pretty light because I want it to be the traditional, the typical sand color. So that's how you make that color. You just use a tiny bit of brown, and you use quite a bit of water mixed in together, and then you will get that sand color. So let me finish that. And I'm going to try to stay in the lines pretty much for this project. If I go outside a little, that's okay. No problem at all. Alright, I am going to get started painting, and you can watch me. I will speed up the video so it won't take long at all. And you can watch me, and then you can get started on your own project. So I'll see you back here in just a minute. Do. Alrighty friends, I'm finished with my palm tree sunset, and I really like the way that it turned out. As you can see, I used a combination of orange and yellow. I didn't even realize when I was painting this that I was going to use that much yellow, but I really like the way that it looks. I started with a darker orange at the top, and as I came down, I used a lighter orange and a yellow. So if you'd like to use this idea, go ahead and feel free to do that. But if you want to use different colors, it's completely up to you. I decided that I wanted to paint my fish orange because I like the way that it all ties the painting together by having orange up here and then having a little bit of orange down here. I hope that you really enjoyed this project. I will see you next time.