Designed for school-aged kids, this fun art project uses multiple mediums to enhance creativity! Using fine motor skills for drawing and cutting, your child can work on independence. Shaving cream also provides a sensory experience made to either get messy or learn to be precise. Change up the activity by creating lots of different animals. What animal will you make? Have fun!
Materials:
● Heavy white paper (watercolor or cardstock)
● Shaving cream
● Glue
● Orange paint
● Black paint
● Paintbrush
● Scissors
● Markers (green, brown, yellow, black)
● Tape
● Bowl
● Spoon
Steps:
Time to get started! We will begin by making our background. Using your green marker, draw short lines coming up from the bottom of your paper. The lines should be close together to imitate grass! Leave a space of about 4 fingers blank on the left side of your paper, this will be where we put our tree.
Now we will make our tree! Using your brown marker, use the space you left blank to create the trunk. Starting next to the grass, curve slightly in so that your tree is not a perfect rectangle. Draw this line until you are about 3 fingers from the top of the page! Now color your tree in brown!
Helpful tip: Use the side of your marker tip to create a lighter tree. Some white space will also make it look more realistic!
Let’s make some branches off of our tree! Create thin brown lines coming off of your tree trunk, feel free to add as many as you like. See the reference picture for an example!
Next, we will add our leaves. Using your green marker, draw small circles at the end of each branch. At the top of your tree, make a larger cloud shape to create a big bundle of leaves!
Helpful tip: Leave some small branches without leaves and change up the size of the circle to make your tree more unique!
To finish up our background, we will use our yellow marker to create the sun! Draw a circle in the right top corner of your paper, and color it in. Then, draw short lines coming out from your circle to show the rays of sunshine!
Set your background to the side, time to create our animal! For this activity, we will be creating a tiger but feel free to try other animals on your own! Using a grey or black marker, draw an outline of your tiger. Feel free to copy the reference picture or look up another tiger shape!
Helpful tip: Don’t forget a long tail and nice curved ears!
Now we will cut out our tiger! Using scissors, carefully cut the outline of the tiger out of your paper so you are left with just a stencil. To reach the tiger, you can cut a line through the background paper. Use your tape to put this line back together once you have cut out your tiger!
Helpful tip: Ask for help using your scissors to be extra safe!
With your new tiger stencil, place it on your background paper. Be sure to place the tiger where you want it to be in your final artwork! Then, use your tape to lightly secure the stencil to the background paper.
Helpful tip: Don’t worry if your tiger overlaps with some of your coloring from earlier! That is okay!
Let’s make our shaving cream paint! Using your bowl, add about 3 handfuls worth of shaving cream! On top, pour white glue!
Helpful tip: Start with a little bit of glue and you can always add more later!
Using your spoon, mix the shaving cream and glue until it is well mixed and your shaving cream is slightly sticky!
Grab your background with the stencil attached. Using a paintbrush, paint a thick layer of your shaving cream mixture onto the tiger.
Helpful tip: It is okay to go outside the lines! That is what the stencil is for!
Time to add our tiger’s colors! Using your orange and black paint, drip small drops on your shaving cream. Be sure to put drops of paint all over to make your tiger even.
Let’s make our tiger have stripes! Using your paintbrush, lightly brush up and down on the colored dots. The shaving cream should begin to have orange and black stripes!!
Remove your stencil and you are done! Be sure to peel it carefully straight up to keep your tiger’s shape.
Helpful tip: Use your paintbrush to smooth out any areas that are missing shaving cream.
Now you can display your masterpiece!!
