Art Project for Kids: How to Draw and Watercolor Paint a Big Halloween Jack-O-Lantern Step-By-Step

1. Introduction and Supplies You Will Need: Hi friends, how are you? I hope you're having a great 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. They will feel comfortable at all times. Today we are going to create this big, Big Jack 0 ' lantern. 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. I like to use a paintbrush about this size, but just use what you have available to you. You will need a cup or a bowl with clean water and a black oil pastel, or a black crayon and 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 Jack-O-Lantern Design: In this step, we are going to draw our Jack 0 ' lantern design. Let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is take a look at our piece of paper. Your piece of paper might not be exactly the same size as mine. Your piece of paper might be a little bit larger or a little bit smaller and that's okay. What we are going to do though is we are going to fill up a lot of our space on our piece of paper with our Jack 0 ' lantern design. Little tiny Jack 0 ' lanterns are so cute, right? For this project, we're going to make sure that we're filling up most of the space on our piece of paper. We'd like our Jack 0 ' lanterns to be really nice and big on our piece of paper. All right, so keep that in mind as you are drawing. One more thing I'd like you to remember. Your Jack 0 ' lantern is going to be unique. It's not going to look like mine, it's not going to look like anyone else's, It's just going to look like yours. That's what we like. We like all of our Jack 0 ' lanterns to be a little bit different from each other. All right? That's what makes everything so cool and special. All right, so go ahead and pick up your black crayon or your black oil pastel. I'm going to use an oil pastel. We're going to start here pretty close to the top, but not all the way to the top because we want to leave room for a stem. So I'm going to start about right here in the middle. I'm going to come down, remember I want mine to be really, really big. Little bit flat on the bottom. Come around and keep going until I touch the beginning of my line. Wow, Look at how big my Jack 0 ' lantern is. It's a pumpkin at this point, right? All right. There I have my shape of my pumpkin that eventually will be a Jack 0 ' lantern. And what I'm going to do now is I'm going to put a stem at the top. If you'd like to add some leaves, you can go ahead and do that. Maybe I'll add a little bit of a vine and maybe a leaf on there. Maybe one over on this side. I just a line that curves around and maybe I'll put another leaf here. If there's a different type of a leaf that you'd like to use, you can go ahead and do that as well. All I have my pumpkin. I have my stem, I have my vines, and I have my leaves. Now it's time to make a face on our pumpkin, to turn it into a Jack 0 ' lantern. Now this is where you can be creative. You can make any type of face that you'd like. I'm going to show you an example of the type of face that I like to make on my Jack 0. '. Lanterns. You certainly can make any type of face that you like. I like to just make some triangles for my eyes. Go ahead and make some eyes, any shape that you like. Then I like to make a triangle. Nose for my Jack 0 ' lantern, an upside down triangle. Then for my mouth, I like to make a smiley mouth with some teeth. Let me show you how I do that. I come do make a to go along make another tooth and then go up. Now I'm going to make the bottom of the mouth. I'm going to come down, make a to come over, make a and then close back up. That's how I like to make a mouth. If there's a different way that you'd like to make a mouth, go ahead and do that. All right. Now I have my eyes, my nose, and my mouth for my Jack 0 ' lantern. I'm going to make some lines for these lines. I'm not going to press quite as hard with my oil pastel. They're not going to be super straight, they're going to be a wiggly. Just a little bit. There we go. Okay. Now I'm going to make the ground for my Jack 0 ' lantern to sit on. I have some lines here. I have one on this side and then I have one on this side. My Jack 0 ' lantern is sitting on the ground. On the grass, I think I'll make some little lines that can represent the grass, just to add a little bit more detail. All right. I have the sky in the background, but we're not going to be able to see a lot of the sky because the Jack 0 ' lantern is taking up a lot of the space, right? All right, so now we're finished creating our Jack 0 ' lantern. If your hands are a little bit messy because of that black oil pastel, go ahead and use your handy dandy paper towel to clean off your fingers. All of the oil pastel might not come off and that's okay. All right. When we come back in, the next step, we will add some watercolor paints to our Jack 0 ' lantern design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Design: In this step, we are going to add some watercolor paints to our Jack 0 ' lantern design. Let's get started. The first thing that I'm going to do is add a drop or two of water into each of my pans of paint. What this will do is it will soften up our paints a little bit. They will be easier for us to use. I'm going to go ahead, take a moment to do that. There we go. Now, while our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our design. Here we have our Jack 0 ' lantern. I'm going to paint my Jack 0 ' lantern orange, light orange, and a little bit of darker orange. I'm going to use the two colors that I have here. If you do not have different shades of orange, that's okay. You can just use one shade of orange. I am going to paint this part. My eyes, my nose, and my mouth. I'm going to paint those yellow because I'm going to pretend there's a candle inside of my Jack 0 ' lantern. I want those to be yellow, like there's light shining through. Then here for the stem, I'm going to paint that brown, and then the leaves are going to be green. In this step, what we're going to do is we're going to focus just on the Jack 0 ' lantern. We're not going to focus on the background, and we're not going to focus on the grass down here at the bottom. Okay, So I'm going to start with my eyes, my nose, and my mouth. And I'm going to paint those yellow. As I said before, I'm going to try to stay in the lines, but if I go outside of the lines a little bit, that's okay. No problem. That happens all the time. Because watercolor paints, they love to run around. A little bit of your paint goes outside of those lines, no problem. All right. I'm going to start here, then I'm going to move onto my leaves, and then I'm going to move on to my Jack 0 ' lantern. So what I think I will do is I will speed up this video. You can watch me speed paint. I'm not real speed painting, but it will look like I am because the video will be moving very quickly. All right, friends, I'm finished painting my Jack 0 ' lantern. I'm really happy with it. I used a couple of different shades of orange. I used this darker orange, and then this lighter orange, and even a little bit of this really dark orange, and I blended them altogether. If you have only one shade of orange, that's okay. You can just use that shade of orange. When we come back, we will be painting the background. 4. Step 3: Paint the Background: In this step, we are going to paint the background. Let's get started. You get to choose the colors that you'd like to use to paint the background. I'm going to choose the colors green for the grass and a lighter blue for the sky. But those are just suggestions. You can choose the colors that you'd like. I'm going to start out with the grass down here at the bottom. I'm just going to start by painting very carefully. I'm going to go slowly and carefully. I do my best work. You can watch me. I'm going to speed up this video and then you can get started on your own painting. All righty friends, I'm finished painting my background. I really like the way that my painting turned out. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.