Saturday, January 27, 2024

Moonlit Snow


These Moonlit Snow scenes were so much fun to create in the past with our tween and teen artists. So this year my grown up art class gave it a try and guess what? 

They loved it too!

This is a multi-step mixed media project that involves wet-on-wet watercolor, splattered paint, iridescent glitter, paint scraping, silhouettes, wild animals, a three-dimensional element, and a quote!  

What's not to love?


One reason I like this project is because so many art skills are used to create it.  We start with wet-on-wet watercolor for our wintery sky. While it dries we practice creating evergreen trees on a separate sheet of paper and using different brushes. Hint: the fan brush is a favorite. 

We also scrape another sheet of paper with black paint using small pieces of cardboard. These are later cut into strips to create our birch trees for the foreground. 

We paint in a few evergreen trees and the silhouette of a an animal that has been outlined in the midground. We splatter with a bit of white tempera paint and add a punch-out of our moon and a bit of glitter here and there.


Then we place and glue our birch trees over the scene using scraps of recycled packing foam for a 3-D effect. Finally, we add a printed 'snow quote' which we cut out with funky scissors for snowflake-like edges.

Take a look at The Snowy North to see our younger artists' versions of this wintery scene.