Monet Water Lilies Art Lesson
Do you love the look of impressionism and want an easy art lesson for your children? Any aged child can use his work as inspiration to create this fun water lilies art lesson.
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Young children will love this project because the background is super fun to make. This will help them feel like they can’t do it wrong. We always love when art projects help build confidence.
Claude Monet Resources To Use
- Getting To Know Artist Series (Monet): Currently, this is free on Youtube and is around 20 minutes and entertaining for children while showing a lot of his real artworks.
- Getting To Know Artist Series Books (Monet)
- Monet’s Cat by Lily Murray
- Monet and the Waterlily Friends by Judiee Lee
Recommended Supplies
- Cool Colored (blue, violet, green) Bleeding Tissue Paper: for the easiest use with younger children precut it into 1″ x 1″ squares
- Glue Water Mixture: 1:1 ratio of glue mixed with water in a small container
- 9 x 12″ Tagboard or Heavy White Drawing Paper: Use at least 80 lb. drawing paper so that the paper does not curl up too much.
- Oil Pastels (green and black or blue)
- Magenta, Violet and White Tempera Paint: We recommend using Premier Crayola Tempera paint so that get enough contrast from your tissue paper background. We tried using the washable finger paint and didn’t seem to make our water lilies stand out enough.
- Paper Plate, Tray or Palette
- Paintbrush
Ideas To Modify This Art Lesson
- Don’t use glue and water to apply tissue paper. You can get an awesome effect by just painting water on top of tissue bleeding tissue paper for your background. Once the paper dries you remove it.
- Create water lilies out of construction paper inside of drawing them on.
- Add textured water lilies by wrapping tissue paper around a pencil tip and gluing on.
How Long Does This Lesson Take
If you are doing this project in a classroom setting, it will take around 3-4 40-minute classes. If you are doing this project at home, it can take up to 1 hour to complete.
How To Make Your Own Water Lily Art
Before You Begin
Discuss and analyze his work with children. One of the things children find most interesting is the sheer size of some of his paintings. This website shows images of him standing with his Water Lily Paintings.
Step 1: Fill White Paper With Bleeding Tissue Paper
In order to do this, you will put a 1″ x 1″ square of tissue paper on a piece of paper and paint the glue water mixture over it. Keep repeating this and overlapping different colors until the whole paper is full.
It can be difficult for kids to keep the paper completely flat, but encourage them to dab, dab, stroke, stroke over the paper and leave it once it is on. We talk more about painting with bleeding tissue paper here.
Step 2: Let Paper Fully Dry
The tissue paper collage will probably be pretty wet and will take a while to dry.
Step 3: Paint Water Lily Flowers
Give pink, purple and white tempera or acrylic paint on a tray. Dip your brush into 2 colors and create repeated curved lines for each water lily flower.
Do not give children water to rinse their brushes in between. You want the colors to natural mix together.
We recommend creating at least 3 different flowers in various sizes to help should foreground, middle ground and background.
Step 4: Let Dry
Step 5: Draw Lily Pads With Green Oil Pastels
Create organic shapes around your painted lily flowers with green oil pastels. Blending a little black or blue on the edge of your lily pad will also make it stand out.
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Art Lesson FAQs
Pre-cut squares are easier for children to use. However, this project does look better if you get more organic shapes by ripping the bleeding tissue paper.
No, you can just eyeball the mixture trying to get a 1:1 or 1/2 water and 1/2 glue. You probably can even get away with 1/3 glue and 2/3s water depending on the glue you are using.
Related Art Lessons Inspired By Art History
- Georgia O’Keeffe Flower Art Lesson
- Textured Landscape Paintings Inspired By Van Gogh
- Heather Galler Art Lesson with Black Lights
- Wayne Thiebaud Food Sculpture Art Project
Remember that all kid art projects should be open for interpretation and encourage each child to put their own spin on creating their own masterpiece.
If you like this easy tutorial, be sure to give us 5-stars below and have fun being creative with your family.
Monet Water Lily Art Lesson
Equipment
- Paper Plate, Tray or Palette
- Paintbrush
Materials
- Cool Colored Bleeding Tissue Paper blue, violet, green paper precut into 1" x 1" squares
- Glue Water Mixture 1:1 ratio of glue mixed with water in a small container
- 1 piece 9" x 12" Tagboard or Heavy White Drawing Paper
- Oil Pastels green and black or blue
- Tempera Paint Violet, Magenta and White
Instructions
- Create a tissue paper collage with cool-colored bleeding tissue paper and glue/water mixture. Fill the whole page with overlapping shapes.
- Let the background fully dry.
- Use pink, purple and white tempera or acrylic paint on a tray. Dip your brush into 2 colors and create repeated curved lines for each waterlily flower.
- Let paint fully dry.
- Create organic shapes with green oil pastels around your painted lily flowers. Blend a little black or blue on the edge of your lily pad to help it stand out.
Notes
- It can be difficult for kids to keep the paper completely flat when collaging the tissue paper. Encourage them to dab, dab, stroke, stroke over the paper and leave it once it is on.
- We recommend creating at least 3 different water lilies in various sizes to help show foreground, middle ground and background.
- If there is not enough contrast between your water lilies and background, you can add a second coat of paint once the painting dries or use pink and purple oil pastels.
