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Completed water color resist lays on a wooden table with watercolors, a glass of water, paint brushes and paper towel near by.
Print Recipe

Watercolor Resist with Crayons for July 4th

Watercolor Resist with Crayons for July 4th is a “blast”! See your fireworks crayon design “pop” when covered with watercolor paint.
Prep Time5 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Total Time25 minutes
Course: Paint Craft
Cuisine: Craft
Keyword: crayon and watercolor, crayon and watercolor art, crayon resist art, crayon resist technique, family activity, kids craft, watercolor resist with crayons, white crayon watercolor
Servings: 1 painting
Author: Shelly
Cost: $1

Equipment

  • Brushes

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Start by laying out newspaper or craft paper to cover your surface to protect it from paint that may go astray! It may be wise to put a paint apron or old t-shirt on to keep paint off your clothing too. Better safe than sorry.
  • This time we went ahead and drew our picture onto the paper with pencil. The composition or layout of your design is usually better when you think about it a bit and then pencil out what you are going to color.
    But there is always the fun of spontaneous creation and that may be your M.O. (mode of operation). In that case you color directly onto the paper. Do what fits you or fits the child best.
  • Next you will go over your pencil drawing with crayons.
    Remember that the wax of the crayons resists the watercolor paint that we will use next. Everywhere there is wax, the color of the wax will show through.
    You can use any color of crayons, just remember, that is the color you will see “pop” through the watercolor in the next step. 
  • Get a glass of clean water and open up your box of watercolor paints next.
    There is a brush that comes in the watercolor set that will work fine, but if you have a set of brushes choose a large one for this step.
    Completely cover your drawing in water. You want the entire surface of the watercolor paper wet so that the watercolor paint can easily spread over the paper. It isn’t a problem if you miss a few spots so don’t let that worry you.
  • Using your wet brush, load the brush with your first color. Touch the paint brush tip down into an area that you would like to be primarily that color- perhaps yellow in a star. 
    Keep adding paint into the drawing in the areas you want this color, adding color to your brush as needed.
    Then, clean your brush out well in the glass of water and move to another color of watercolor paint and do the same thing. Touch the areas of the picture you want this second color and let it spread. 
    Repeat this until you are done adding color to your painting. 

Video

Notes

But it is not very easy to see where the white crayon wax is being placed as I color. Take care to get all the lines colored that you want done with white wax in this step. 
This is not going to be a precise “painting”. You are going to drop paint into the water and let it spread and swirl in the water. 
Don’t try to “paint” and move the color into exact places. Enjoy watching the paint move around and blend.