Tropical Island Sunset

Imagine visiting a tropical island paradise, lying on the beach, listening to the gentle waves, and watching a beautiful ocean sunset. 

That's what we did... and then we painted it!

The stunning sunset colors in these paintings are not actually paint at all. 

Artists instead covered the paper with soft (sometimes called chalk) pastels, starting with purple at the top, then pink, red, orange, and ending with yellow in the center. Then they reversed the order of the colors to the bottom of the paper to create a mirror image for a beautiful ocean reflection.

The next step was to dip a finger in white tempera paint and smear it over the colors, top to bottom. Like magic, the white paint adds texture and a bit of drama while becoming the color of the pastel! They carefully blended one color with the next, wiping fingers often to avoid making 'mud.' 

While the paintings dried, our artists practiced painting a tropical island silhouette in black tempera on plain white copy paper. They wanted to learn how to depict things like a palm tree, palm leaf fronds, sea grasses, birds in flight, and distant islands.

Then they painted their tropical island scene right over their dried sunsets. So beautiful!

Our artists ranged in age from 6 to 13. We have also created these Tropical Sunsets at a previous Summer Art Camp. 

This is an expanded version of an Art for Kids: Ocean Scenes painting idea, in which black cutouts are used for the silhouettes (probably an easier option for younger children).