Preschool acrylic sheep portraits

This past week, the 3 year old class created acrylic paintings of sheep.

We started by observing some photo reference of sheep and discovering the shapes.

Using soluble graphite, the children drew each shape they discovered onto their acrylic paper.

I emphasized drawing big, trying to touch the sides of their paper with the shapes.

What shape is the head?

What shape is the nose?

What shape are the ears? And where are they on the head?

And how do we make sure our sheep can breathe? What shape is that?

When they had their shapes on the paper, I traded the graphite for paint brushes and some paint.

In just the primary colors, that's right, all the color you see on these artworks were created by the 3 year olds.

Are you impressed? I know I am!

Starting with the background, I let them experiment with mixing blue with white and red on top and blue, yellow and white on the bottom.

To keep things interesting, I gave them some cardboard I had cut into rectangles to scrap through the paint on the paper- further mixing the colors.

All the while asking them to telling me what they discovered happening to the color, which was very, very exciting.

When the backgrounds were covered, I put a lot of white on their palettes and told them to begin painting their sheep. They did not wash their brushes, only wiped them, in order to give some interesting shades of color in the white.

What was so great about having the kids start with the graphite was when it mixed with the paint. it automatically began giving their artwork some interesting values. And in the case above, a mouth! How amazing is that mouth for a three year old drawing?!

As all the white paint was filling the page, I suggested they use the back of the paintbrush to draw in the curly hair. Oh how they loved drawing back into their artwork!

And of course, pink was requested and we discovered together that pink is made when you mix a lot of white to red.

As they finished, each little girl had the opportunity to draw over their painting one more time, really hard, with black oil pastel. I then had them run their fingers over the black oil pastel "like a car", making revving noises while they did it.

vroom, vroom, just like a speeding car, the 45 minutes were over and parents/nannies arrived for pick up.

And oohed and aahhed over these sweet little creations their children made. Can you blame them?