Easy Sunset Art [ORANGE]

A Simple 1 hour art project I completed with my kids. You don't need any fancy supplies for this.

1. Start with a large sheet of paper. I used a large strip off a roll of IKEA kiddies drawing paper
2. Using a black oil pastel crayon, draw the silhouette of your trees. Don't try to be too neat. Squiggly lines look better.
3. Now using VERY watered down paints (acrylic poster paints or water colours are fine) start with the lightest colour and begin to wash the paint across the page using a large hairy kiddy brush. You will notice that the oil pastel repels the watery paint. If this doesn't happen, your paint is not watery enough. I find it's a good idea to test the paint on scrap paper first
4. Try not to leave too much water on the page, but while it is still wet begin to add the darker colours to the page and layer them up to build depth and contrast. The colours will run together a little but this is ok. The more you let the page dry between coats, the darker the contrast of the new colour will be, or the more defined will be the line between one colour and the next.
5. Add the red sunset tipped clouds to the sky before applying the black. It is also possible to completely use reds, yellows and oranges and skip the dark sky altogether.

In order to show the effect of a totally orange/red sunset, I quickly whipped up another picture for you. (30 mins work!) Please note that the paper was not fancy art paper and it was still wet when I took the picture, hence it warped a little as it dried. If you used quality watercolour paper you could avoid this effect.