Celebrate winter with two projects that have a lot of room for individual expression – Wax Resist Northern Light and Snowflake Art. Our homeschool group did them last week and I loved all of their different interpretations of northern lights and snowflakes.
Group Project
We did the art in my garage. I made a signup with six different starting time slots so everyone had room to work (see below about the extra large paper we used). I also made some basic video tutorials for the students to watch ahead of time. That way I didn’t have to repeat the directions for each group. I’ve included those videos below.
Note: My videos are designed to show the general process, not to tell students exactly how they have to do things. When we meet in person, I remind them to change things up however they want. (And they always come up with much better stuff than what I create in my demo videos.)
Materials
For these projects, the only things we bought were extra large watercolor paper and grease pencils (you can also use crayons). We had watercolor paints, paint brushes, and smaller sized watercolor paper leftover from previous art projects.
- Watercolor paper or heavy card stock
- Watercolor paints
- Wax crayons, oil pastels, or grease pencils in black and white (grease pencils are also called china markers)
- Paint brushes
- No. 2 pencil
Directions for Northern Lights
We used 18 x 24″ watercolor paper for the Wax Resist Northern Lights. It made table space a little cramped, but we really enjoyed making these oversized pieces of art.
Lightly sketch in your trees and mountains with a pencil. Add in any animals, buildings, or other details.
Color the outlines of your trees, mountains, etc with a black grease pencil.
Optional: Give your mountains and trees borders to contain the paint. This will keep your sky from bleeding into your trees and vice versa. (If it’s a silhouette of a deciduous tree, this doesn’t apply.)
Optional: Paint your trees and mountains with dark subdued colors like green, brown, purple.
Take a wide wet paintbrush and wet the sky area. Use different colors to depict northern lights. Allow them to flow and swirl. Add some black in areas as desired.
Use a white pencil to shade in snowy or icy areas in the foreground.
Take a wide wet paintbrush and wet the snow or ice area. Paint with light blue.
Use a paintbrush or old toothbrush and flick white for stars and falling snow.
Directions for Snowflakes
Use a paintbrush and get your watercolor paper wet. Then, add color and make a background of very light blue or whatever color you like. Allow to dry. (I did this ahead of time for our group.)
Use your white grease pencil or crayon and draw snowflakes. Make a big one, lots of small ones, or a few of each. Think about how snowflakes are all symmetrical but unique.
After you’ve finished drawing your snowflakes, take a wide wet paintbrush and wet the entire paper. Paint your colors over the snowflakes and watch the wax repel the paint. Experiment with different combinations of colors.
Extra Notes
One of the unexpected joys of this project was teaching some of the kids (and moms) how a grease pencil works. To ‘sharpen’ the pencil, you pull the string on the side and peel off the paper strip. It’s kind of magical. 🙂
I hope you have a chance to make Wax Resist Northern Light and Snowflake Art this winter. And, if you live in the area, stop by and see our display at Belmar Library in Lakewood, Colorado beginning Friday, December 3.
Other similar projects you might enjoy: