Van Gogh Flowers

Oil pastels on light blue paper. I'm not so good at drawing out of my head, but I did enjoy mixing the colors for the table, vase and background.

Here's the original idea Deep Space Sparkle.

Sunset Silhouette

This is a watercolor sunset with a silhouette picture cut out from black paper. Deciding what to make was fun once I started brainstorming. I love how it came out!

Here's the original idea at Deep Space Sparkle.

O'Keefe Watercolor

This one was very simple. I just looked at a flower and drew a few sketchy lines with a black oil pastel and then painted with watercolors. I'd like to figure out how to keep a sharper edge for drawing the lines thinner. It's hard to keep a sharp point on such thick crayons! But I like the look of the white border that comes from taping it off with masking tape.

Here's the original idea at Deep Space Sparkle.

Kandinsky Colorweaver

This is loosely based on Kandinsky's Color Studies. It was mostly just fun and relaxing to color in an ordered way and enjoy how the colors look next to each other.

Here's the original idea at Art Projects for Kids.

Ice Cream Cone

Here's another one inspired by Wayne Thiebaud, the cake painter. This one was fun to draw and even more fun to watercolor. I really like the method of outlining in black crayon to  keep the paint in its place.

Here's the original idea at a site that's new to me--Oodles of Art.

Owl Painting

I haven't used acrylic paint much, and never like this with more than one color on the brush. This seems like a perfect project to practice the new technique--the owl feathers seemed to come out just right with each stroke! This was done on black paper, so it was really fast and easy. (I had to make it quite small, 5"x6", because this small piece was the last of my black paper!)

Here's the original idea at Deep Space Sparkle.

Abstract Oil Pastel Bear

The original idea for this one was to draw a cat. I don't care much for cats, but I do like this particular bear, so I thought he'd fill in well. Like a lot of these projects, this one was just simple drawing and then fun with coloring in. Quite satisfying to do.

Here's the original idea at Art Projects for Kids.

Monochromatic Picasso

It looked so nice...until I brought out the sharpie marker! I did like painting monochromatically, though. And it inspired me to pick up drawing again, because the initial sketch was so rewarding.

Here's the original idea at Art Projects for kids. I really like the example she shows that was done by a Kindergartner!

Klimt Tree

Gustav Klimt is an artist who is known for using lots of gold in his paintings. This project uses gold and silver markers to make a tree based on one of his works. It actually calls for more colors of metallic markers, but I got by with my little metallic gel pens. It was so fun and easy to do! I especially liked doing the dots and stars along the branches.

Here's the original idea at Art Lessons for Kids (another new site I just found!)

Grand Canyon Acrylic

What fun it was to do this one! The depth and colors are so stunning and the black outlines really make it pop. It's based on illustrations done by Robert Neubecker in a now out-of-print children's book "Wow! America!"

Here's a link to the original idea at a great site I just discovered, Deep Space Sparkle.

Winter Birch Trees

This one is so simple--just strips of masking tape and then dark blue watercolor with some salt sprinkled over it. After it dries you take off the tape, paint on the moon with white paint and use watered down blue watercolor to put shadows and lines on the trees.

Here's the original idea at Art Projects for Kids. I like hers much better...almost enough to re-do mine! (My salt did something very different so I didn't add the white snow dots.)

Hearts

This one was very relaxing to do. I printed the hearts out and then colored each one a solid color with crayon. Then I went over it with blue and green watercolors, let them dry, and added detail and highlights to the hearts with oil pastel. The idea was based on the work of modern artist Jim Dine who did a lot of heart art.

Here's a link to the original idea at Art Projects for Kids.

Wayne Thiebaud Cupcakes

Wayne Thiebaud (pronounced Tee-bo) is the artist known for his delicious looking paintings of cakes and pies. I found a really good video about him on YouTube. His demeanor is quite touching and his paintings look so good in the angled video shots where you can see the texture on them--yum!

I enjoyed drawing and copying the cupcakes and coloring them in, but struggled with the background colors. Here's the original idea at Art Projects for Kids.