Little Picasso's: The Eagle

This was "B's" first painting with me. He has been to many pick ups and drop offs for older sister "P" and this year, he decided he wanted to try out his hand at painting. He chose boldly! A soaring eagle based off of a painting (I can't find the artist to reference, but you can see the original image in some of the pictures below)! I say go big or go home, right?! It was interesting figuring out ways to teach him how to paint this image, but I was super impressed with the results, especially for a guy who doesn't love art classes.

For our first meeting, I had the sketch ready to go, and used rubber cement to maintain the eagle's location while we painted in the background. "B" used a sponge to spread in the sky first with horizontal strokes.

Then we added some yellow tints.

And next the mountains went it.

"B" used a sponge to add in the clouds as well. Then it was on to the trees. My goal was for him to make triangle shapes by blotting in the green on the trees. It took some practice, but he got it down!

What a great background! And it was fun too! Next up was the eagle!

Session 2: Today was the eagle day. I reversed the use of rubber cement and also taped off sections of the eagle to keep the location of the bird in check. But "B" ended up being a super careful painter, and the rubber cement wasn't even necessary which was awesome! We started on the tail feathers, and I gave him the blue lines and then he painted over them following my strokes with white paint to mix in and over.

Then we moved to some other spots of light on the wings.

Next was the dark top line of the wings.

Here you can see where I painted in dark areas of shadows for him to fill in, similar to a paint by number. Excellent job of staying in the lines!

Studying his work! You can see now how he was moving to the lower wings. Using gray and white, I had him fill in the wings with a vertical line work. He was SO good at this! I was impressed! We also talked about how to use dark paint to keep the separation of the feathers.

While "B" was completing his wings, I removed the rubber cement from the body of the bird and then blocked in areas of dark and light for him to paint in. I also had him change the way he used the brush to blend the paints and create a texture in the body of the bird. Then he added the eye, and the grays and whites for the head, as well as the beak.