Activity:
Still Life Painting for Kids
Spend a fresh spring day painting with the color wheel! The color wheel can be confusing, but turning it into a hands-on art project makes it easy for kids to understand. Challenge your child to paint using just three colors located next to each other on the color wheel, called analogous colors. She'll try her hand at a still life just like Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, which he painted with the analogous colors yellow, orange, and green.
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What You Need:
- Flowers
- Vase
- White drawing paper
- Tempera paints
- Paintbrushes
What You Do:
- Before getting started with the art project, take a look online at a color wheel and sets of analogous colors with your child. Make a list together of all the sets of analogous colors she can find.
- Look at Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh and talk about the analogous colors he chose to use in his painting.
- Now it's time to paint! A still life features natural and/or man-made objects against a bare or static background. If you're doing this activity in the spring, take a nature walk with your child to find wildflowers or flowers from your own garden to use in her still life (be sure you have permission to cut or pick any flowers you find). If it isn't spring or wildflowers aren't readily available, you can also buy a bouquet from the florist.
- Once home, help her arrange the flowers in a vase and display it in a location where she can easily draw and paint undisturbed, like the kitchen table. If possible, place the vase against as bare a background as possible, such as an empty wall.
- Now on to painting. Encourage her to lightly sketch out the still life before she begins painting to get a rough idea of the positioning of the shapes and lines and figure out the composition.
- Now, get out the tempera paints and invite her to paint the still life with the 3 colors she selected, along with some help from white and black. Mixing colors is allowed, but really encourage her to challenge herself and be creative with the colors she has.
When her painting is finished, display it on the wall in a decorative frame so it looks just like a painting in a real museum!
