Campfire Watercolor Painting Process Art

A campfire is a great summer theme for camping. It is always fun to add crafts and activities with printables for each theme.

I also love it when you can let kids decide what a project should look like and how you do it. I love this watercolor process idea. It gives kids a great way to do be creative in their own way.

Plus I know I always get more requests for different types of art projects you can do with kids. And I hope that you enjoy this campfire watercolor process art as much as we did!

Campfire Watercolor Process Art - a fun way to paint and mix colors with this watercolor process art project - 3Dinosaurs.com

The Campfire Watercolor Painting is a fun new addition to our summer activities.

Campfire Watercolor Painting

One thing I love about the project is that kids can decide how big or small the fire is. They can mix the colors how they want. They have control over where things are.

I just give them the general idea of what we are doing and let them have their own thoughts about it as well.

And since we are not camping this year and we thought it would be fun to make a campfire we could look at this is a great way to do just that.

The Campfire Watercolor Painting is a great craft for kids in kindergarten and first grade. And older kids can do it as well.

Camping Books You Can Read with the Campfire Watercolor Painting

You can read some fun books with this painting like Pete the Cat Goes Camping, Curious George Goes Camping, or S Is for S’mores: A Camping Alphabet

You can also check out this How to Make 3D Fire Flames after the campfire painting! Or maybe you might want to try this handprint campfire craft.

What you need to make this Watercolor Campfire Painting

How To Make the Watercolor Campfire Painting

You will see all the steps you used below to make the campfire painting.

Draw the campfire on the paper

We start with a pencil and the watercolor paper. I love the watercolor paper because it gives texture to the painting and works well to absorb the water.

You start by drawing the ring of rocks and the fire. You might want to look at pictures of a fire to help.

If you have younger kids you might want to do this step for them. You can draw the rocks, the fire, the ground, and the mountains.

Trace the Lines with Oil Pastels

After we have the pencil drawing done we start with the tracing with the oil pastels. This will be the area we want to keep the watercolor in.

We did the rocks first. You can see how we outlined each of the rocks. We each used a dark gray to outline them.

Next, we did the fire. We used yellow, red, and orange pastels for the fire. We each picked how the colors should mix in the activity. We might have done some lining inside the fire as well. It is up to you how you want to do it.

Paint the Campfire with Water

Next, we started to watercolor process part of the painting. You have a bowel with clear water. You dip a brush in the bowl and then paint water over the area. The oil pastels help keep the water in that area.

We have used a bigger brush for painting with the water. It helps it go faster.

Watercolor Paint in the Water

Then you load up the paintbrush with the watercolor> that you are using. You drip the brush into the water covered area. You can watch the watercolor spread through that area. You can see how she started with a red and orange color in the flames.

You can have fun mixing the colors in the water to create the flame.

You repeat the same process above for the rocks around the fire. It makes the rocks have a fun texture to them.

Paint the Background

We then painted the background of our pictures. We made the ground around the fire brown and green. The mountains we did a mix of greens. And finally, we did blues for the sky. It is always fun to mix regular painting with the process art painting.