Watercolor with crayon resist

Kids have a hard time with watercolors. They bleed around on the page and mess things up. It is hard to be patient and take your time to allow the layers to dry. One of my favorite things to do is to use crayon to help out. Here's what you do:

1. Choose a picture and trace lightly in pencil. We put ours on the window to make the tracing easier. Tape would've helped, but keeping tape in our house is next to impossible. My kids must eat it or something.

2. Color over your pencil lines with a white crayon. It there are other areas you would like to stay white, color them with the white crayon as well.

3. Now, paint. It works! This is even helpful for preschoolers - it looks neat even when you "get out of the lines."Here is Gracie's. The crayon helped her flowers and the fawns spots stay white when she painted.

Here is Daniel's Troy Aikman picture. I think allowing kids to paint from a photo gives them more confidence with painting, lets them learn HOW to paint first without worrying about creating their own original works too. I keep a tub full of pictures from magazines, most of them laminated for art and for writing as well.

Ally's turned out really well! This technique works well with white, or snow scenes especially - or as in this picture when two objects are touching each other.