Wayne Thiebaud Inspired Easy Crafts For Kids

Our inspiration for Artist of the Week this week came from someone with, perhaps, a sweeter tooth than I: Wayne Thiebaud! While I am not 100% positive that the man truly does love sweets, I am sure that he loves to paint them. Who knew ice cream, cake, and lollipops would spark such creativity and interest in my preschoolers? (oh wait… I did!) I think the pictures speak for themselves when I say I am incredibly proud and impressed with how well my littles did with this project.

Each little artist had to trace their shapes first using permanent marker. This takes quite a bit of effort when you are 3, 4, or 5! All the kids successfully held the tracers themselves and did their best to outline each shape. We talked about lines, interesting lines, changing lines. We talked about how lines DON’T have to be perfect, that they can go any way we want them to, and how no line- no matter what- can be called a mistake for this lesson.

I demonstrated how to paint inside the shapes, but asked the kids if it was ok for paint to go outside the lines. They said, “yes, because art is art and ice cream is allowed to drip!” Couldn’t say it better than that 🙂

We painted as a group this time (the kids love when we’re all together at one table) and we shared a larger pallet of watercolors than usual. Where we normally have too much watercolor mixing (in the plastic palette- until every color turns brown) there was careful turn-taking and perfect washing and rinsing of brushes in between colors. Even my littlest kids did so well staying inside their shapes!