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December 7, 2015 2 Comments

The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush Sunset Art Project

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On the blog and in our homeschool, I’ve been focused on Native Americans for the last month. I introduced the Plain Indians to my children and did this beautiful art project inspired by a Native American legend.

The Art Curator for Kids - The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush Art Project Watercolor Painting-Pin

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After introducing Native Americans in the previous lesson, we read The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush which is a really beautiful story about Little Gopher, a child artist. He receives a vision to paint with the colors of the sunset but can’t find the right colors.

He eventually finds brushes of brilliant colors planted on a hill which then become the brilliantly colored flowers referred to as Indian Paintbrush after he paints his sunset.

Indian Paintbrush Flowers-Photo Credit Dcrjsr
Indian Paintbrush Flowers, Photo Credit: Dcrjsr

After reading the story, we painted sunsets with liquid watercolor paint starting with blue at the top followed by purple, red, orange, and yellow.

The Art Curator for Kids - The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush Art Project Watercolor Painting

A really cool variation of this lesson would be to paint with actual flowers! It would take some experimentation with the type of flowers and the types of paint, but it would be fun to try!

The Art Curator for Kids - The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush Art Project Watercolor Painting3

After we painted the sunsets, we let them dry and came back on a different day to add a silhouette of a hill and teepees as they lived in teepees in the book.

The Art Curator for Kids - The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush Art Project Watercolor Painting4

Overall, it was a fun, easy project with a great cultural connection!

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Filed Under: Art and Artists, Art Teacher Tips

 

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Reader Interactions

2 Comments

  1. Newsha

    December 8, 2015 at 5:17 am

    Amazing! Thank you for sharing! I really don’t have any problem with sometimes giving kids ‘instruction’ as ‘how’ to do it..they’ll still find their own way in between I think..

    Reply to this comment
    • Cindy, The Art Curator for Kids

      December 12, 2015 at 2:43 pm

      You’re welcome!

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