Watercolor Sunset Lesson for Kids

Supplies
Watercolor Paint
1/2 Sheet of Watercolor Paper
Watercolor Paint Brushes (Large Flat) medium Round
Water in a container
Paper towel or rag
Optional sharpie or black marker
Steps
1. Tape a border or draw one (optional)
2. Mix up 3 puddles of paint in your tray or on a plate with Red, Yellow and Blue paint in them
3. Start with the blue at the top and paint a 2 horizontal stripes of paint, slightly overlapping
each other moving down the page.
4. Start adding red to your brush, paint one to two stripes, rinse your brush and add pure red
paint from your puddle.
5. Start adding yellow to your paintbrush, paint one to two horizontal stripes of paint
continuing to move down the paper. Rinse your brush and paint a solid yellow stripe,
slightly overlapping the area you painted before.
6. Now you should be about halfway down your page, reverse the order.
7. Start slowly adding red to the yellow, then add blue to the red
8. Let your sunset dry while you practice a silhouette.
9. Once your paper is dry draw or paint a silhouette over the top using a sharpie, black
watercolor, India ink, or black acrylic paint. (you could even cut one out of black paper and
glue it on top)
10. Take the Tape off
Adaptions
For Younger Students - Simplify this lesson by painting on a smaller piece of paper, or using
liquid watercolor for the puddles (that way they don’t need to mix big puddles of paint. You
can always make mixing the paint fun, use a dropper to add water, and/or make it a game to
see who can mix the puddles the fastest.
The Prang watercolor sets I like to use have removable colors, sometimes I remove all but red,
yellow and blue for exercises like these.
The Silhouette drawings can be hard to fill in with sharpies for younger children. They can
paint it with black watercolor, India ink or black acrylic paint. They can also cut out a black
silhouette of paper, and glue it to the sunset.
Extensions
Paint a reflection in a pond or lake
Paint a sunrise
Science - what are the differences in a sunset vs a sunrise?
What causes the colors in the sunset?
Paint a silhouette of where you live over the sunset
Paint a silhouette of you over the sunset
Homework
Paint a new silhouette in front of a sunset, a city, a person, anything you choose
Vocabulary
Silhouette
Tips
In order for the colors to blend smoothly the color you have painted needs to be wet when you
add the next color. Mixing puddles before hand makes it easier to apply new colors quickly.
Sharpies have a pretty strong smell, you could also use any black marker over the top.
This tutorial was made by McCall Johnson for Mr Otter Studio
Music A Piano Tale by Immersive Music
Purchased music license from PremiumBeat.com