Painting Project for Kids & Beginners: How to Watercolor Paint a Big Flower with Patterns

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 painting project, a watercolor painting project that I designed, especially for kids and beginners. Students do not need to have any 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 flower using patterns. 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 large paint brush and a small detailed paint brush. We will be using the larger paint brush for the background and the smaller detail paint brush for the designs on the flower. You will need a cup or able with clean water 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: Paint the Background: In this step, we are going to apply some watercolor paints onto our sheet of watercolor paper. 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 pan of paint. What this will do is it will soften up our paint a little bit so that it is easier for us to use. I really do encourage my students to take this step because it does help. All right. Now that our paints are softening up, what we're going to do is we are going to apply our clean water to the whole sheet of paper. We want our sheet of paper to be very, very wet so that we can apply our watercolor paints and the colors spread around. Okay? So let me show you how I'm going to do that. I want to make sure that all of my spaces on my piece of paper are covered with water. I'm going to start at the top of my piece of paper. I'm going to be moving fairly quickly, and I'm just going to go back and forth to make sure that all of that space is covered with this clean and clear water. Now, I'm going to go ahead and take a look at my sheet of paper. It's hard to see because the water is clear, but I'm just going to add a little bit more water. Just quickly coming down to make sure that there is full coverage on my sheet of paper. I want to make sure that that happens because then the paint can flow easily on the piece of paper. Okay. There we go. Now what we're going to do is we are going to apply our watercolor paints directly onto our piece of paper and they will naturally spread around. Let me show you what I mean. Let me start out with this color pink. I'm going to drop it on the piece of paper. Do you see what's happening? It's spreading around. I'm going to go ahead and drop some pink paint in all kinds of different spaces on my sheet of paper. Then I'm going to move to a different color and I'm going to use all of the bright colors. Go to try this orange and I want those colors to eventually blend together. And I'm moving quickly because I don't want the water to dry on my piece of paper. Otherwise, it won't spread. So I'm going to now choose some red. I'm going to keep doing this until most of my paper is covered with color. Every single square inch doesn't need to be covered with color, but most of the spaces, it looks really nice when you're doing this project, if you can make sure that most of the spaces have some color. But if a little bit of white peaks, okay. That actually might look nice. Now I'm going to have some green. Notice I'm not using the color black because we are going to come back in and use the color black to make some designs. So we want the black to really stand out at that time. That's why I'm not using it right now. And remember your colors will move around on your sheet of paper. That's what watercolor paints do by nature. They love to spread around and mix around. All right, so I have most of my white spaces filled on my piece of paper. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop painting, and what we're going to do that's really, really important is we're going to allow a piece of paper to dry and you will see some really neat designs when you allow it to dry and let it do its thing. Okay. And then when we come back, we will start adding our black paint and create our flower designs. So I will see you back here when your piece of paper is completely dry. 3. Step 2: Paint the Flower Design: In this step, we are going to paint our flower. So let's get started. The first thing that you need to do is make sure that your piece of paper is completely dry. If you touch your piece of paper, the paint will not come up on your hand if it is completely dry. That part is really important to make sure that your piece of paper is completely dry. Then what we're going to do is we're going to start painting. If this is the center of our piece of paper right here, we're going to go up just a little bit from the center. I think I'm going to start my flower about right here. All right. For this flower, we're only going to use one color while we are painting. We are only going to use the color black, and you are going to use the smallest paint brush that you can find. I'm going to use this size paint brush. It's pretty small. When you are holding your paint brush, remember to hold your paint brush vertically like this. That is straight up and down. If you go a little bit to the side, that's okay. But if you start painting like this, then what's going to happen is you're not going to be able to get a really crisp and fine line, right? So we're only going to be using our black paint, and we're going to start in the middle of our piece of paper a little bit above the center. Alright? So I'm going to start about right here. What we're going to do first is we're going to put a little bit of water onto our paint brush and then dip it into our black paint, and we're going to start out by painting a circle like this. That's how our flower design is going to start. From here, what we're going to do is we are going to add onto this circle expanding out as big as you'd like. We start here and then we go around and add some different patterns and designs until our flower gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with some lines that look like this. They're just curve lines. And I'm going to go all the way around that circle. Notice that I'm moving slowly and carefully. Now I'm going to take a look at my design and I'm going to see what I'd like to do next. I think I'm going to make some straight lines coming out from each of the petals like this. Then maybe I will put a small dot at the end of each line. I'm thinking ahead. Remember, this paint is wet so we don't want to touch it with our hand. Can rest your hand on your piece of paper, but you have to be very careful not to touch that black paint. Now I'm going to add a circle that's filled in, turning that into a dot. And then I'm just going to be thinking about my next step and what I want to do. And I'm just going to build on this flower and add more details so that it will expand out and just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. All right, friends, I feel like I'm finished with my design with my flower design. I've used a lot of the space at the top of my piece of paper. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to create a stem coming down from the bottom. I'm going to go ahead and do that coming straight down from the bottom of my design. Now, I think I'm going to add some leaves. Okay. And then I think I'm going to just add a few dots along the bottom of my stem. Maybe I'll add a little line in my stem in my leaves. Now, go ahead and take a look at your design. If there's anything else that you'd like to add, go ahead and do that now. I hope that you had a lot of fun with this project. I will see you next time. I.