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Mixed Media Autumn Leaf Painting

by Jean Van't Hul
October 3, 2012
Mixed Media Autumn Leaf Painting

We’ve continued to experiment with doodled autumn leaves in combination with other fall arts and crafts ideas just because they are so fun and beautiful. These fall paintings were recently made by Maia and Daphne on canvas with paints, leaves, and metallic sharpies.

The sharpie drawings were more of an afterthought on this particular project, but such a nice one. I’m starting to think that every art project needs a little silver or gold sharpie addition…

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 05

Maia requested paints in fall colors, so I got out our
BioColor paints
in red, orange, gold, yellow, etc (tempera or acrylic paints would work, too). She painted graduated rectangles around her canvas…

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 03

…and Daphne painted hers pink and orange and then covered it all over with red. They both added (pressed and dried) leaves to the wet paint. Daphne used small red leaves in a random design while Maia created a frame around the edge of her canvas with larger leaves.

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 13

Once the paintings were dry, I set them out with metallic sharpies as a simple after school art project.

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 18

Maia carefully traced the veins of a couple of her leaves.

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 16

Daphne circled the canvas with her sharpie and then added smaller drawings directly on some of the leaves and also on the painted canvas part.

(As usual, I lovef seeing how the two of them approach art projects so differently!)

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 22

I added a coat of
mod podge
to the leaves to help preserve them and also to make them more vibrant and shiny.

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 25

I love the look of the leaves in combination with the canvas paintings!

Kids Fall Leaf Paintings 28

Love it! I don’t know why we didn’t think to add autumn leaves to our paintings before now. We’ve added just about anything else you can think of—glitter, salt, tissue paper, construction paper, 3D objects…

Have you tried anything like this? Or have any other leaf arts and crafts ideas for us? I’m in the mood to try anything leaf related!

P.S. Today is the last day to enter the giveaway for 1 of 20 copies of my autumn crafts ebook! You have until midnight EST.

P.P.S. If you haven’t signed up for my weekly newsletter yet, I hope you will consider subscribing. While I link to the blog posts from the past week (a great way to stay informed if you don’t check in on the blog regularly), I also include personal updates, a kids’ art activity (sometimes new–as it was this week–and sometimes from the archives), and a list of artful ideas from around the web.

Note: This post contains affiliate links.

Autumn Arts & Crafts Ideas & Supplies

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See our FALL family fun list on my Amazon storefront!

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Fall craft bundle graphic

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This is an online workshop with 10 fun fall arts and crafts activities that your family can enjoy all autumn long. Use coupon code KASHALFOFF for $9.99!

Plus a bonus of 10 fall-themed drawing prompts!

30 September Activities for Kids Free Printable Graphic

Download our FREE printable idea list of 30 autumn activities for kids & families!

Or just check out the blog post with the links… So many fun ideas for fall!

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