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Under the Love Umbrella Art Lesson for Kids

painting Oct 22, 2022

A perfect rainbow painting project inspired by the children’s book Under the Love Umbrella by Davina Bell and Allison Colpoys. It is Book Week month and we are celebrating with some fun art lessons based on my favourite titles - have you read this book?! It is one of our most loved books about love. The illustrations are full of technicoloured playful characters and related able scenes of daily life, by two year old always points out the child at the birthday party or the one getting dropped off at school. Their is also an umbrella that features in the story, symbolising the invisible protective love that our parents and care givers have for us - no matter if they are near or far. In this art lesson we draw our own umbrella, full of rainbow colours and scratched in patterns. Then practice our brush strokes with little drops of rain. You can get a head start on drawing the outlines with Under the Love Umbrella printable. This can be used as a drawing guide or paint/colour directly onto. I can’t wait to see your love umbrellas!

What you need:

Step 1.

Read the beautiful book! If you do this first I’m guessing there will be a high chance that the conversations throughout this art project will hover around the topics of love, feeling cared for, gratitude and all things important in your Little Artist’s life. I highly recommend starting this project with the story or referencing the images (even google them) for added impact.

Step 2. Drawing the outline

I created a printable with an easy to draw outline of our character holding the umbrella. You can print this and draw over the grey outlines with a marker or draw your own. I began placing a dot in the middle of my page and drew an upright cross, and another cross in the gaps. The lines extended the same length towards the edge of the page to create each section of my umbrella, it will look like a stick-figure star. Then join each line up with a ‘U’ to create the outline of the umbrella. The little person underneath begins with a rectangle for the coat, you can fill it in with pockets or buttons. And then two little legs, and two longer, wider rectangles for the gumboot legs and two semi-circles for the toes of the gumboots. To finish your outlines draw a curved line for a puddle.

Step 3. Paint

Use a medium round tip paintbrush to paint each section of the umbrella. They’re quite small areas, so be careful not to use too much paint on your brush. It is fun to add some patterns to each section by scratching into the wet paint with the back of your paint brush! Scratch in swirls, wiggly lines, stars, hatching. Then go on to paint the rest of your person and the blue puddle they are standing in.

girl painting a colourful umbrella

Step 4. Paint the rain

These little rain drops are a fun way to practice brush strokes, be careful not to load the brush with too much paint! I painted dark blue rain drops first, then added light blue. All my brush strokes started on the outer edge of the page and were falling down towards the puddle at the bottom. I’m sure Little Artists might even light to add rainbow rain at this point!

You’re painting is done! I hope you loved this idea of combining a children’s story with an art project. You can find another blog post with 5 Amazing Book Week Art projects to do next! I am often inspired by kids book and connect them with many lessons inside my Online Art Club for kids. The full length video version of this project just dropped inside the Art Club to celebrate Book Week.

I would love to see your results, tag me over on instagram @art_with_georgie or email your work through to me. I always reply with a message right back to the Little Artists.

 

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