We recently tried out a project from the lovely book Drawing Workshop for Kids by Samara Caughey. The beauty if this shadow drawing project is that it frees the artist from worrying about making their drawing 'look' like the object they are drawing by tracing the distorted outlines of their shadows. There is no right or wrong, you are free to be creative.
The book, Drawing Workshop for Kids includes drawing activities that support the development of creative, confident children ages 7 and up. All kids need to begin engaging in the pleasure of these simple yet inspiring drawing projects are a pencil and paper. Along the way, new materials are introduced, giving kids the opportunity to experiment with new techniques.
Each of the three main chapters—drawing from life, drawing from images, and inventive drawing—focuses on techniques to explore, such as observation, mark making, shadow, line, composition, detail, contour, and perspective.
Drawing Workshop for Kids strives to inspire children to investigate drawing and develop their own approach to art, building creativity and confidence.
- Large sheets of thick paper
- Watercolour paints & brushes
- Flowers, seed pods or sticks
Set up some vases of flowers, seed pods and sticks in a sunny spot where their shadows are cast across your paper. The first step is to trace around the shadow outlines with pencil. You can move your flower vases to trace multiple shadows filling your sheet of paper with drawings.
Once the paper is filled with drawings, now it's time to add colour. We used a mixture of regular watercolour paints and natural plant pigment watercolours to fill our drawings with colour. I love how beautifully these painting turned out.
Instead of using plants, you could also draw the shadows of other items like toy figurines or animals.
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Art Workshop For Children
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