Rosellas & Parrots Acrylic Painting

By Annie (3 years old) and Charlie (5 years old)

Lesson Background:

I'm on maternity leave this year, so all my art is with my own kids :)  We've been getting lots of gorgeous crimson rosellas and king parrots in our garden lately, so we decided to paint them.

Lesson Materials:

Acrylic paint
Paintbrushes
White A4 paper
Black texta/marker

Lesson Steps:

1.  We looked at photos of crimson rosellas and king parrots.
2.  I gave step-by-step verbal instructions on how to draw the bird, branches and leaves, demonstrating on my own sheet of paper as I said each step.  I also gave advice about widths, spacing and positioning as part of my instructions.  Annie in particular (being only 3!) needed a fair bit of support in these elements, and I occasionally put little dots on her page to show her where and how big to draw parts.  I deliberately didn't ever put the helper dots into the actual shapes... I wanted her to come up with her own style, so it was purely to assist with her spacial awareness.  To her credit, she did all the actual drawing herself!
3.  The kids painted the birds.   They did all their own painting, though I did give advice about adding detail like feathers and textures on branches, and how to create shadow and light using different shades of the same colour.
4.  When dry, I outlined all the shapes and lines on their artworks with black texta.  If I had been doing this activity with older children, I would have encouraged them to do this step themselves.

Photos:

My 3 year old painting her crimson rosella

My 5 year old painting his king parrot

Finished rosella painting before outlining

Finished king parrot painting before outlining

Finished with outlining- you can see the difference outlining makes!

Trimmed, backed onto coloured paper and framed in cheap black picture frames from Kmart...
who needs to buy art for your home when you can just use your own kids'?!