Patterned Birds: Watercolor Resist

What a GREAT first lesson to kick off the school year! We started off this project by looking at some images of birds. I asked the students to look closely at the lines and to break the bird body up into shapes. I passed out some paper and we began our bird drawings!

Step One: The Drawing

We followed these basic steps to come up with our bird shapes.

Step Two: Crayon Details

We looked at some feather details in various birds and discussed different lines we could draw inside of the bird bodies. Using 2-3 colors, students went into their bird shapes with crayons and draw some line designs.

Step Three: Watercolor Resist

I demonstrated how to use the watercolor pans and how to “move the paint” around with water. Watercolor is all about keeping your brush really wet, spreading colors, and letting colors touch and explode onto paper! Kindergarteners loved watching how the watercolor paint completely resisted the designs they had drawn in crayon. They saw how cool the darker paint looked against the light colored crayon and how this contrast makes things pop!

Kindergarteners returned to their seats to paint in their birds and complete a colorful background.

Step Four: The “Frame”

I laid out a variety of colored construction paper and invited each table of Kindergarteners to come up with their paintings to select a frame. Each student laid their painting on a variety of colors to decide which colored frame went best with their composition.

After we glued the bird paintings onto their colorful frames, we spent some time discussing various line patterns that we could use around our frames. Kindergarteners already understood all about patterns and how elements within the patterns repeated themselves- I was impressed! They created their patterns around the frames using markers.