Ocean Animal Watercolor Painting for Kids – The perfect art project for kids who love all things ‘under the sea’ and enjoy experimenting with new painting techniques.
This easy painting idea for kids introduces the use of wax crayons as a resist material. Combined with watercolors, it’s a process with a WOW factor. It’s also by far the easiest technique to explore with kids both at home and within the classroom!
And to make the creative process easy, Children can use our extensive library of printable animal templates to create gorgeous sea creature paintings.
Ocean Animal Coloring Pages and Art Templates
We love our ocean animal themed arts and crafts, and within the Arty Crafty Kids members area, you can take advantage of our sizeable collection of animal printables for a variety of arty crafty projects.
For our ocean animal kids art project, Arty Crafty Kids can paint a jolly crab, seahorse, cartoon style turtle, seashells, shrimp, lobster and lots of different fishy friends.
To access the templates…
Join Here!
Watercolor Techniques that Kids Will Love!
Watercolor paints are a fabulous medium for kids. They’re easy to use, inexpensive, create beautiful colors and can be applied in lots of fun and experimental ways.
Our Favourite Watercolor Techniques…
The Arty Crafty Kids have tried and tested many watercolor techniques. Here are a few of our favorites:
Watercolor Wet on Wet Application
The easiest and most common watercolor technique for kids to try!
Very simply, start by brushing a light layer of clean water across the page. Next, apply the watercolor paint onto the wet paper. Add a second (or however many you like) color to the paper and watch the paint mix, creating gorgeous watery patterns as the colors meet.
Kids will be mesmerised by this process.
If you try wet on wet watercolor painting at home, I recommend using liquid watercolors or tubed watercolors mixed with water (just make sure the colors are dark enough before painting).
Watercolor Salt Painting
This is another fascinating process and one we’ve explored time and time again on the blog (salt painted butterfly).
Use one of our animal templates and add a layer PVA glue from a squeezy bottle along the outline.
Cover the glue with salt and remove the excess.
Next, dip the paintbrush into some watercolor paint and dab it directly onto the salt. The paint will quickly spread across the salt. Dab lots of different colors across the salty lines and watch the colors blend.
Watercolor Resist Painting
Watercolor resist can be explored with black ( or white)glue, melted crayon, tape,yarn, oil pastel and wax crayon.
Our chosen resist medium for ‘Ocean Animal Watercolor Painting for Kids’ is the humble wax crayon. It’s by far the easiest medium for kids and can be enjoyed by the smallest of children.
Materials for Ocean Animal Watercolor Painting for Kids
Watercolor Paints (Tube, Palette or Liquid)
Mixed Media Paper or Watercolor Paper – if neither are available, standard white card stock may also work with liberal water usage.
Wax Crayons or any of the resist materials suggested above.
Download the Ocean Animal Templates
Download the under the sea printables from the ‘Animal‘ section of the Arty Crafty Kids club.
Already a member? Login HERE
Ocean Animal Watercolor Painting for Kids
Preparing the Template
Step 1:
Using a black crayon, follow the outline of the template.
It doesn’t matter of the lines are wobbly, too thick or too thin…or not following the lines at all!
Messy lines will add to the overall effect and the process itself is great for fine motor skills.
Let’s add some Invisible Lines!
Step 2:
Switch the black crayon for a white and create some lines, squiggles or even patterns within the template.
With each template, we circled the eyes of the animals with white crayon. This will give features some extra emphasis.
Applying the Watercolor Paint
Step 3:
Load the paintbrush with the first color and sweep the brush within the animal shape, moving across the waxy lines.
Since the paint is water based, the wax will repel the paint to leave the waxy lines in tact.
Step 4:
Continue filling the template with paint.
Step 5:
While the paint is still wet, encourage the Arty Crafty Kids to play with the colors.
Maybe add a drop of red to the blue or yellow and watch the colors mix.
With enough paint, the colors will leave an amazing watery effect, adding texture to the finished piece fitting of an under the sea painting.
Using Colored Wax Crayons
Once the Arty Crafty Kids have created with black and white crayons, try mixing it up with different colors.
The effects are just as bold and leave some impressive contrasts.
The Completed Ocean Animals
Once your Arty Crafty Kids have tried ‘Ocean Animal Watercolor Painting for Kids’ with wax crayons, try some of the other techniques listed at the beginning of this post!
Happy Crafting!
Arty Crafty Kids Club
Creative and playful Art & Craft Templates
How to Draw Guides, drawing prompts and pre-writing Line work
Colouring pages & Seasonal activity booklets
Perfect for Educators and Parents, with new content added weekly!
Join the Arty Crafty Kids Club and gain access to our exclusive collection of art and craft templates and learning resources. Designed with parents, teachers and creative kids in mind, you will never run out of activities for the kids!
