Art Lesson for Kids & Beginners: Drawing and Watercolor Painting a Shamrock Bird

1. Introduction and Supplies You Will Need: Hi, friends. How are you? I hope you're having a great D 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 little bird holding a Shamrock for St. Patrick's Day. 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 capoabl 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 Shamrock Bird Design: In this step, we're going to draw our bird design. So let's get started. Go ahead and pick up your black oil pastel or curyon. And what we're going to do is we're going to come to about the middle of our piece of paper, and this is where we're going to make our bird. So it's going to go from the middle of the piece of paper a little bit to the right. So we're going to start about right here and we're going to come around. This is going to be the bird. And then we're going to come up to a point like this. So you know what it reminds me of this line? It reminds me of the letter C that keeps going. So you start here, you come around, and then you end up about right here. Now, we want to connect this line to this line. So let's go ahead and make that connection. Now let's come back up to the front and make a little beak. And let's make an eye. Just making one eye because we're looking at the side of the bird. If there's a different type of an eye that you'd like to make, go ahead and do that. Let's make a small wing. There we go. Now let's make a shamrock right here. And what's going to happen is the bird is going to be holding onto the shamrock with the beak. Okay? So let's move up straight from the beak and let's make a heart. And then to the right side of the heart, let's make a sideways heart. And then to the left, let's make another sideways heart. And we're connecting all of those hearts right here in the center. Now, let's connect the shamrock to the bird's beak. Now let's move down to the bottom part of our bird's body, and we're going to make two legs. I'm going to make one leg coming out this way with a little foot at the bottom, and then the other legs going to come out this way. You can make your legs go any which way. Alright? And that's it. That's it for drawing the bird and the Shamrock. When we come back in the next step, we will start painting our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to paint our bird design. 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 so that it is easier for us to use. I really do encourage my students to take this step because it helps. Now that our paints are softening up, we're going to turn our attention to our bird design. So here we have a bird holding a shamrock, and the only things that we're going to paint in this step is the bird and the shamrock. Okay? So we're not going to be painting the background at this point. We're going to be painting the bird green, and we're going to also be painting the shamrock green. Okay? So if you have different shades of green in your palette, you can choose the shades that you like. I'm going to just choose this shade right here. The reason why we're using the color green is because this is for St. Patrick's Day. And St. Patrick's Day, you see a lot of green. So I'm going to go ahead, use quite a bit of paint and a little bit of water, and I'm just going to start painting. I am going to try to stay inside the lines. But if I go outside of those lines a little bit, that's okay. No problem. Watercolor paints, they love to spread around. Alrighty friends, I'm finished painting my bird and my Shamrock. As you can see, I chose to paint my beak yellow, and the color is starting to spread into the green, and I really like the way that that looks, so I'm just going to let the watercolor paints do what they want to do, and we'll see what kind of design we end up with. Okay. In the next step, we will start painting the background. 4. Step 3: Paint the Background: In this step, we are going to paint our background with the rainbow colors. Let's review those rainbow colors first. So we're going to make a stripe of red right here at the top. Then we go to orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. And we're going to make those stripes going across this way vertically. Okay? When you're painting your stripes, make sure that you try not to get paint on your bird or on your sham rock. Alright? So you'll have to make sure that you go around those shapes. Okay? Go to start here at the top with our red. Just going across like this. And we're going to try to fit all of those colors onto our piece of paper. And if they blend in with each other, that's okay because they're going to be touching each other. So go, like, right there, and then I'm going to switch to the color orange and touch the red. And then I'm just going to move my way down. And I'm going to make sure that I go around that shamrock and around the bird. Alrighty friends, I'm back, and as you can see, I have my red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, but I have some space here at the bottom. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start over with those colors. I'm going to start again with the red and go all the way to the bottom of my sheet of paper. All righty friends, I'm finished painting my background. I think it looks awesome. I love the rainbow colors. Remember that your colors are going to spread and mix and blend into each other, and that's what we want. So I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.