Kindergarten Line Drawings Brought to Life

Step 1:  Have your child make a line drawing.

Step 2:  Have your child fill it their drawing with tempera paints.

Step 3:  Have them recreate their line drawing with a marking pen

Easy as that!

When Firecracker gets into a drawing mood, she can produce some pretty detailed pencil drawings, which are cute and wonderful in their own way...but it's nice to spice them up once in a while.  After Firecracker finished her background for the fall tree painting, there was plenty of paint left.  She'd been such a good sport at following the directions for the techniques I was trying to teach her, I told her she could make some more paintings and keep going until she ran out of paint. 

She started this one as a line drawing and painted the background around it.  Then she wanted me help her mix some brown paint for her skin.  (Her skin tone isn't that dark, but she definitely aware that it's darker than the rest of the family...we live in a good town for her I think.  She's darker than some, lighter than some, and the same as others in her class.)  When she was finished painting her face, it had totally covered up her drawing.  We let it dry and came back to it a week or so later when I had her do her drawing over with a black Sharpie permanent marker (but notice she had to wear a "painting" shirt so she wouldn't accidentally get the sharpie on her clothes). 

Of course she loved getting to draw with a "grown-up" marker.  I really like how it's such a typical "person" drawing for her, but the bright colors really bring it to life.  She scratched some grass in the wet paint with a noodle, but decided it needed some help from the pen too.The border around the side is from using painters tape to attach it to the table (recommended by Gail at That Artist Woman) and it gives it a nice finished look.