Fall Foxes

Recently I created a foxy, fall project with a fun crew of 5-7 year olds. Before drawing and painting, we read How to Find a Fox by Kate Gardner, featuring stunning photographs taken by Ossi Saarinen.  We learned a lot about foxes, laughed a little, and noticed what colors foxes had on them.

Then we drew foxes together with black oil pastels. I used this great step-by-step guide from Art Projects for Kids. They have so many great drawing tutorials.

((This blog post contains affiliate links. If you purchase an item from one of those links, it helps support what we do at Bright Art Studio.  I will only link to products that I would buy myself.)

After drawing, I let the artists tell me what colors of liquid tempera paint they would like to use for their fox.  Many of them chose to mix their own version of red-orange or yellow-orange, with small areas of black and white.

---

In our next class, we tackled the background.  We used a square of cardboard to paint tree trunks onto blue paper.  Scraping the cardboard creates a rough, bark-like texture.  We used white paint, with a bit of black for shading/texture.   I then showed them how to stamp with a large flat brush to create fall leaves.  We painted a canopy of leaves on the trunks, and piles of fallen leaves on the ground.

Then on to the finishing touches.  The artists cut out their foxes and glued them onto their backgrounds.  They then had a chance to use oil pastels to add any final touches and details.

I also did this project with a younger group of 4-5 year olds.  We changed up the background, drawing brown trees with oil pastels, and fingerpainting on the leaves (though some weren’t excited about the mess of finger-painting, and so I also offered q-tips.). I also simplified it by just giving them orange paint for the foxes instead of having them mix their own.

---