Friday, October 30, 2015

self portraits in watercolor by three year olds

Right next to puppies and kittens, the cutest thing on earth is watching three year olds create self portraits.

Honestly, nothing could be cuter.

I put out a large piece of watercolor paper and gave each little girl a permanent marker. 

Then I placed a mirror in front of them so they would be able to see themselves and began asking them questions.

What shape is your face?

Draw a very big circle on your paper.

What connects your face?

Draw two lines to make your neck.

And here is where it got very cute.  I asked them to study their eyes in the mirror and then draw them. They then studied their nose, their mouth, their ears, and their hair.

They loved looking at themselves in the mirror and concentrating on their reflection and then they would draw their features exactly as you would expect a three year old to draw them.

So funny.

So sweet it made your teeth hurt.

After they finished drawing themselves with the marker, I gave them liquid watercolor in the three primary colors and asked them to begin putting in a background.

I encouraged them to mix the colors together to see what happened and gave them some salt to explore.  I was quite impressed how well they did not putting the backgrounds into their faces.


Then I asked them to put out their hands and asked what color was their skin, pink, yellow, or orange?  One said pink and the other said yellow. (I think she actually said orange but ended up just using yellow)

Then I showed them how to water down the color so they got a light pink or yellow.

Then they got to work painting in their hair.  Both had bangs and they may of been a little long but by no means did they hang down past their mouth.

Or their nose.

What a fun 45 minutes this was watching the girls create self portraits. What a great start to my Monday morning! No matter what happened the rest of the day, it was hard not to feel good after such an endearing morning.

I have no doubt these will be cherished works of art for years to come by their families. 


No comments:

Post a Comment