Cultivating Creativity Calendar

This activity invites you to bring the beach to you through watercolour painting and drawing.

You can do this activity on your own or you can choose to work in a small group to take a ‘day trip’ to the beach together. Working on a creative activity helps you to develop teamworking skills as well as other essential skills such as active listening, problem-solving and supporting each other to aim high to produce a great piece of work.

Process: Painting and Drawing

Experiment with wet-on-wet painting and drawing using simple, everyday materials that you can find at home or bring into the classroom.

Top tip: If you are working at home you might want to work in the kitchen for this activity. Being close to a sink is helpful.

• Thick/heavy-weight white paper, like watercolour paper
• A plastic tablecloth (or work on a surface you can get wet, like a draining board next to the sink)
• Any of the following ingredients:

• • • A tea bag
    • A teaspoon of instant coffee
    • Half a teaspoon of paprika
    • Half a teaspoon of turmeric
    • A couple of frozen or fresh blueberries or raspberries
• A small empty container for each ingredient – like mugs, cups, glasses or old jars
• A paint brush
• Jar of water
• A pencil
• A black pen
• A piece of charcoal or a soft dark, brown-coloured chalk pastel (optional)
• A piece of white chalk or a soft white pastel (optional)

 Take care

• To wash your hands after using spices like turmeric and paprika – they can stain!
• To wash up your materials after use.

1. Bring together your materials to a table covered with a plastic tablecloth.

2. Gather your ‘ingredients’, which could include instant coffee, turmeric, tea, or paprika, and place each one into its own  container.

3. Add a small amount of water to each one and stir with a spoon. You’ve now made natural paint to work with.

4. Take your paper and, under a running tap, soak it until it is completely wet. Lay it flat on the surface you’re working on.

5. Using your ‘ingredients’ and a paint brush, cover the wet paper with the different coloured natural paints you have made. (Make sure to clean your brush in your jar of water in between using different colours.)

6. Put down the brush and gently lift the paper to move the colour around the page, enjoying watching the paints slide and merge into each other.

7. Leave your paper to dry somewhere warm.

8. Once your paper has dried, take your pencil and follow the outlines of colour and shape you see on the page. Draw lines turning each one into a pebble shape – these can be as knobbly and randomly-sized as you like, piled close to each other, just as you’d find on a beach!

9. Enjoy the process of covering the page, leaving tiny spaces between pebbles.

10. After you’ve covered your whole page, take your pen and outline each pebble, filling in the spaces in between with black ink. This gives your beach depth and definition.

11. Finally, you can add some features to your pebbles. Draw some lines across one or two with your pen, add some shading with a piece of charcoal or a black soft pastel, or use chalk to add a marking or a dash of light.

You could also try…

To use the same process but use artists’ inks instead of tea, coffee, spices etc. You could also add more colour to your picture with watercolour paint after you’ve made your pencil lines.  

Watch a step-by-step video guide of the ‘Beach life’ activity.