Watercolor Resist Leaf Paintings

Thanks to Elmer’s for sponsoring today’s post. All opinions are honestly my own.

I’m always looking for fun, seasonal projects to do with Little Crafter, but each year, I find myself needing to get even more creative. If you’ve seen a fall craft on Pinterest, we’ve probably done it…maybe even twice. We’ve turned flowerpots into pumpkins, vases into luminaries, and made fall trees out of pom-poms. We’ve made bottle ghosts, fall leaf coasters, yarn monsters, and popcorn box mummies. This time around, I wanted to do something that would help hone his artistic skills and be a piece we can keep on display all season, from now until it’s time to break out the Christmas decorations. Here’s what I came up with.

This project requires very few supplies and is easily adaptable for an art class. You can modify it for students/kids of all ages; in fact, it’s even fun for grownup artists! For older kids, it’s a great chance to talk about warm and cool colors, resist technique, watercolor technique, and more. For very small artists, it can still be just plain fun!

Materials:

Pencil
Blank Canvas {ours is 6×6}
Elmer’s Glue-All or X-Treme School Glue
Watercolors
Paintbrushes

Step 1: Trace or draw leaf shapes onto your canvas.
We decided to do lots of small leaves but you could also do just one large one in the center. Part of the fun of this project can be the preparation step, where you actually go outside and hunt for leaves of different shapes and sizes to trace.

Step 2: Outline your shapes with Elmer’s glue.
In addition to the outside edges of the leaves, you’ll want to make some lines to represent the leaf veins. Let the glue dry completely before you move on.

Step 3: Fill in your leaves and background with watercolors.

This is a great time to talk about warm and cool colors with your kids/students. Fall leaves tend to be in the warm color family: reds, oranges, and yellows, so you can encourage kids to use those for the leaf parts of the painting. Then, have them use a cool color like blue, green, or teal for the background.

That’s all there is to it! If you like, you can trace around the glue lines with black permanent marker to make them pop, but we chose not to. Now you have a fun, seasonal piece of art to display on your wall or mantel! Create several to make your own mini gallery wall just for fall. If you’re doing this project with a large group and don’t have canvases for everyone, watercolor paper will work too and you can frame the finished products or display them on a bulletin board. What do you think? Is there a little artist {or several} in your life who would love this project? Would you enjoy trying it yourself?