acrylic paintings from animal art camp

No art camp is complete without one acrylic painting.

From the time the kids enter the studio at the beginning of the week, it is the question I hear most often, "when are we going to paint?"

9 year old

I usually introduce an acrylic project on Tuesday so I have a day to kind of understand each child's personality a bit better first. This allows me to guide the process in a way that best suits each student.

For the animal art camp, I had each child tell me what animal they would like to paint.

8 year old

I pulled out a matching reference file from them to look through for inspiration and then had them begin to sketch.

7 year old

This is where the kids do a lot of work. Some may sketch their idea several times before they are happy. Some children are quite independent in this process and what very little input from me while others ask for me to draw side by side with them. During this time I am stressing the importance of composition and asking them to pay special attention to creating a background and foreground in their work.

7 year old

For those having trouble getting started, I will have them first find the shapes within the animal and then begin connecting those shapes to create a final drawing.

7 year old

Once everyone is happy, we transfer their sketches using carbon paper onto the acrylic paper.

7 year old

I have only ever given children primary colors along with white and black for painting, encouraging them to try their hand at color mixing. We go over taking paint from the side of the glob and I also encourage them to mix their colors directly on their paper instead of on the palette.

9 year old

I also give the kids three different size paintbrushes and then go over how there is a perfect paintbrush for each job. Big ones for big areas right down to small ones for details. I always equivocate it to shoes...you don't wear high heels to run a track race.

Preschool "Beluga".  How awesome is that air bubble?!

And finally I encourage them to start with the background and build up to what is in the foreground so they never have to worry about painting up to a line.

5 year old

From there my job really just becomes adding paint to palettes as needed and watching them have fun.

8 year old

Such an interesting and wonderful variety of art work, original, carefree, and fun, just like the group of children who created them.