Drawing and Painting Class for Kids: How to Draw and Watercolor Paint a Turkey Portrait Step-By-Step

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 turkey. 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'm going to use this size paint brush, but just use what you have available to you. You will also need a cup orreble with clean water, a paper towel, and a set of oil pastels or crayons. We are going to be using the color black. 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 Turkey Design: In this step, we are going to draw our design. Let's get started. The first thing that we're going to do is we're going to pick up our black crayon or black oil pastel. I'm going to be using a black oil pastel. Let's take a look at our paper. This is what I'd like you to remember. We are going to fill up our entire space with our little turkey face. Okay? The face is going to be really, really big on your piece of paper. All right? Little turkey faces are so cute, right? But we want this face to be big. We're not going to be drawing the body of the turkey, just the face. Let's start about right here, and what we're going to do is we're going to make a really big circle. Now, I've had a lot of practice drawing circles. If your circle does not look like mine, that's okay. We want your circle to look like your circle. All right, here we have our circle. Let's add some features into this circle. For the face for our turkey. We're going to start about right here and we're going to make some nice big eyes. I chose to have a little bit of white at the very top of my eye. If you'd like to do that, you can do that as well. If there's a different type of an eye that you would like to make for your turkey, go ahead and make that eye. I'm going to make sure that my eyes are pretty much the same size. I'm going to make this one a little bit bigger. Then I'll make this little circle a bit smaller here. There we go. Okay, The next thing that we're going to do is make the beak. I'm going to make a triangle. Start with a straight line, then I'm going to come down and then come down with slanted lines, with diagonal lines. Now I'm going to make the little gobbler coming out from one of the sides like this. There we go. That was pretty easy. What we're going to do next is we are going to make the neck and part of the shoulders of the turkey down here at the bottom. I'm going to go about right here. And I'm going to make a curve line coming all the way down to the bottom of my sheet of paper. And then I'm going to do the same thing on this side all the way to the bottom. Now what I'm going to do is I am going to make some feathers in the background. But you're not going to be able to see the entire feather. You're just going to be able to see part of it. Because the feathers are going to be going off of the piece of paper. Let me show you what I mean. I'm going to start about right here and I'm going to make some lines coming out from the head. And I'm just going to make them going all the way up, all the way over to the edge of the sheet of paper like this. They don't have to be perfectly straight to the feathers coming out behind the head of my turkey. All right, so let's see, is there anything else that you'd like to add? If you'd like to add a little something here at the top of your turkey's head, you can go ahead and do that little detail. That would be a good idea If there's anything else that you'd like to add to your Turkey. You can go ahead and do that at this time. Go ahead and put your crayon or your oil pastel back into your box. When we come back in, the next step we are going to start painting our design. 3. Step 2: Paint the Turkey: In this step, we are going to paint our turkey. 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. What this will do is it will soften up the paint a little. It is easier for us to use. I always encourage my students to take this step because it really does help. There we go. While our paints are softening up, let's turn our attention to our design. Here we have our little turkey with a big big head. We have feathers in the back. These are the tail feathers. All right, what we're going to focus on in this step is we are going to focus on painting the turkey. We're going to be painting the turkey and the little details on the Turkey and the body of the turkey. Then in the next step, that's when we're going to be painting the rest of our design, which are the feathers in the background. Let me show you how we're going to make brown paint for our turkey. What you're going to do is you're going to take some drops of water and drop them into one of your wells. Then after you have a good amount of water, you're going to take a little bit of brown paint, roll that paint, brush around, and then create a light brown color. Your brown might be a little bit lighter or darker than mine. That's okay. That's what makes things interesting when they're different. All right. I think I have enough paint. Let me test this out. Oh, that's nice. I do think I want to go a little bit darker, so I'm just going to add more paint. If you want a stronger color, then you add more paint. If you want a lighter color, a softer color, then you add more water. I'm going to go ahead and paint this turkey. All right, dear friends, I have my turkey painted. Now I'm going to work on the little gobble and the little details at the top of the head and the beak. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow paint right here. Rinse might paint, brush out really well. Then I'm going to add a little bit of red paint for my details here at the top. Then also for my little gobble, If your paint runs into other paints, that's okay. That's just what watercolor paints do. They run into each other. They love to do that. All right, we are finished now painting the actual turkey and the details. When we come back in, the next step we will be painting the feathers in the background. 4. Step 3: Paint the Feathers: In this step, we are going to be painting the feathers in the background. Let's get started. The colors that we're going to use to paint the feathers in the background are the warm colors, the Thanksgiving or the Fall colors, which are red, orange, and yellow. Your set of watercolor paints might look different from mine, and that's okay. Just use what you have available. I have a few different options for orange. I might add those in as well. What we're going to do is we're just going to start painting. I'm going to start here at the top. I'm going to paint, One of my feathers may be red, and then the next one may be yellow and then orange, red, and then orange, and then yellow. I'm just going to mix it up. I'm not even quite sure which colors I'm going to use for which feathers, but I do know that I'm going to use those fall colors, which are the red, and the orange, and the yellow. I'm going to get started with my red right here for this feather. And I'm going to try to keep the paint between the lines. But I'm going to know. I'm going to understand that watercolor paints like to spread around. So if it spreads around a little bit to another feather, that's okay. All right. You friends, I've finished painting my design. I'm really happy with my little turkey and the way that it turned out. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time.