In Middle School, Teens

This colorful middle school cacti painting project is inspired by the muted desert colors of the Southwest!

Our Tweens & Teens in camp last week literally knocked our socks off with these stunners! This colorful middle school cacti painting project was most definitely one of our biggest hits in summer camp! Keep scrolling to see how we made them and more amazing photos of these impressive pieces of art.

Middle School Cacti Painting Project// www.smallhandsbigart.com

These were created on large 18×22 inch 200# cold pressed watercolor paper.  We chose to create a clean border by taping them to the table with painter’s tape.

We wanted the focus of this lesson to be on light, shadows & texture, not mixing colors.  So ahead of time, we mixed a huge palette of muted Southwestern desert landscape inspired colors.  They could do a little mixing from those colors but the main idea was to have them select from only that palette.  That freed them up to focus on the composition, shapes, light, shadow, texture, etc.

Middle School Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

The first day we only got as far as sketching the design and painting the background.  The reasons we chose to paint the background first was two-fold:  to enable them to get as clean of a line as possible when painting the cacti, and also to enable them to create as flat and smooth of a color for their background.  If you look close, many of them chose to dry brush blend a few colors to create the look of a desert sunset.  If they painted the cacti first, then tried to paint the background around the cacti, the results would be more splotchy.  For their background, they were also able to decide if they want to include a horizon line or not.

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Day two students worked on painting their cacti by layering colors, working from light to dark.  We encouraged them to focus on very concentrated brush strokes, working in small areas at a time.  Then they had to identify an angle for their light source and go back on top and layer of lighter & darker colors for the light & shadow.  There was a lot of hands-on demonstration prior to each step of this painting.

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

The final steps were to add texture with their brush strokes, and other tools (for example, using the handle end of the brush to create white dots for the spines).

Southwest Cacti Painting Project // www.smallhandsbigart.com

 

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Showing 9 comments
  • Mary
    Reply

    These are All So Gorgeous!!

  • lee
    Reply

    what kind of paint did you use for these? They’re lovely.

    • Admin
      Reply

      Hi Lee -thank you! We used acrylic paint. We pre-mixed some nice muted desert inspired colors so they wouldn’t have to mix from scratch.

  • Rebecca M Robinson
    Reply

    Beautiful! Did you provide photos of different cacti ?
    RR

    • Small Hand Big Art
      Reply

      Hi Rebecca – yes, we always look at photographs of real objects to study their shape & form. As much as we think we “know” what something looks like even *I* probably couldn’t paint cacti straight from what’s in my head 🙂

  • Judy Bettencourt
    Reply

    These paintings are just wonderful! Posting the entire process was very successful. I may try this concept myself!

  • Jen
    Reply

    Clarify for me-watercolour paper, acrylic paint. They look amazing. i will order the paper on amazon, and buy the acrylic paints from the dollar store

    • Small Hand Big Art
      Reply

      We often use a heavy weight watercolor even with other type of paint besides just watercolor. It has a nice weight and texture to it – we usually use a 200# weight paper.

  • Taylar Piers
    Reply

    How did these take the kids? Beautiful job!

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