Franz Marc Colorful Animals

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During the month of March my preschool class did two lessons based on the artist Franz Marc. The vivid use of color to express emotions and ideas is a trademark of this German born artist. He is most famous for his paintings of unusually colored animals set in almost abstract style scenery. These colorful animals are great for a preschool art lesson.

How To Horses:

  1. For the first project I found a Franz Marc horse on the internet as a coloring sheet which I traced onto a scrap of poster board. They outlined them in sharpie and used chalk pastel to fill in the color. After spraying them with fixative I cut them out.
  2. The kids then painted a colorful “warm colors” background with acrylic paints, using a sponge to add texture.
  3. When the background was dry they used the glue stick to place their horse in the scene. 

How To Elephants:

  1. The second project was a great drawing project. I taught the kids how to draw a step by step simple elephant starting with a circle.(This is a simple way to draw an elephant-see How to Draw an Elephant. We practiced this two times on a practice sheet. Then we did the final drawing on a sheet of watercolor paper.
  2. We outlined the elephant in Sharpie.
  3. Then we used watercolors to fill in the pink and create a setting.

I think both of these colorful animals projects turned out amazingly well considering these are 3-5 yr.olds.

Please refer people back to this site if you use this lesson! 🙂

I'm writing a book!

I am excited to announce my latest project!  My daughter and I are working on a big, beautiful, creatively designed book on artist related lessons (similar to the ones on this website but with more details, step by step instructions and photos). The book will be for anyone who wants concise, detailed, well laid out lessons that are ready to teach, in a format that is fun to look at as well.

Book Info

Other Lessons:

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