Waldorf watercolor jack-o-lanterns

Last week I mentioned that Little L, C and I were going to do some pumpkin crafts in homeschooling. Little L would not let me forget that promise. The first thing I thought to do was a jack-o-lantern inspired by one K made in her first year of kindergarten at Portland Waldorf School. It's very similar to the magic crayon process (wax resist) except that in this, you can see the crayon markings before you paint. Here's how we did it:


I first cut pumpkin shapes out of some of our heavy duty watercolor paper. Then I gave them to C and Little L. Using their stockmar beeswax crayons they colored in the stem of the pumpkin in whatever color they chose and then drew a face in yellow, or in Little L's case - just drew happily all over the paper.

When they were finished coloring, I soaked the paper in water for a few minutes so they could paint using the wet-on-wet method over the crayon. Instead of mixing an orange paint for them I gave them each one jar of red paint and one jar of yellow paint (stockmar, again). This way they could see how colors are made for themselves. Little L is too young to instruct in painting so he just did his own thing but I had C first paint her pumpkin in red and then she painted over the red with yellow.

As you can see, the paint first completely covers the crayon marking but then it magically disappears only seconds later. Once they were done, I kept the pumpkins flat on their painting boards and let them dry. This is how they looked upon completion:

I love the way the colors mixed and moved on C's. That's the beauty of wet-on-wet watercolor painting!

A new lantern idea popped in my head today for Martinmas. It's inspired by beeswaxing autumn leaves. I will try to complete one before Martinmas and share the tutorial with all of you so you can make one too!

-------------------------------------------------------------
Don't forget to enter for your chance to win a beautiful hand knit bunny here!

Waldorf watercolor jack-o-lanterns