While I was walking down one of the hallways at L’s school I spotted some wonderful rainy day art on the wall done by one of the classes. I liked them so much we tried them at home. At school they had used oil pastels and edicol dye, but we substituted watercolour paints, as we didn’t have the dye.

L drawing her picture.

First we drew a picture using the oil pastels. Most of the picture was drawn in white, including the clouds and raindrops. L put big bolts of lightning on her first one too. I also drew a picture and added a rainbow to it as an example for A of what we could do. A copied this picture, adding rainbows to her art.

Adding watercolours paint.

Once we finished drawing with the oil pastels, we used watercolour paint to cover the paper. The oil pastels resist the paint, so that only the blank paper is coloured, and the picture emerges clearly. I used black and blue for my clouds, light blue for the sky and light green for the hills. L made her first picture very blue with deep black clouds at the top. She also added some black in the background, giving her picture a cityscape look. She told me that the swirls at the bottom are from the drops of rain, but I think they look like scorch marks from her lightning. A had one picture copied from mine with black clouds, blue sky and green hills, but her other one was almost all blue. For this one she added some purple across the bottom, mixing it with the blue, and told me it was a river with lots of fish.

A’s second picture.

My rainy day painting.

L’s thunder storm.

A has a tendency to use a lot of paint in her art, and this left her paper quite wet and a bit soggy in places. Mine and L’s paintings dried quickly, but we had to wait a while for A’s. We have our rainy day pictures displayed on our living room wall.