Last week my son tried a great white shark drawing video (it went really well) and then we spotted a turtle video (not such a success) which lead us to a video by Jan Brett showing how she created a box turtle for her book Mossy (Some of you may know her book The Mitten – she wrote and illustrated it). We watched it and I immediately liked her style. She shows the kids step by step how to create the animals but while she is showing them what to do she includes lots of detail – like if this is a male the shape here is different, or they would be red and not yellow. She also talks about things like what they eat and how the patterns on their shells are actually formed. You really get the sense that she has done a lot of research about her animal characters before she starts drawing them for her books. So the kids end up getting a drawing video, a bit about using watercolour paints and some interesting animal facts in one clip (the clips tend to be roughly 20 mins).

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So both kids tried the turtle video. The drawing went really well (well I was impressed)

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and then they tried to add the watercolour but I must admit we did not have nice small brushes and they struggled to get the watercolour looking like it should. (I am off to get some small detailed brushes this weekend.)

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My son actually commented that it would have worked better if they tried using their watercolour pencils. So about 2 days later they retried. They redid the turtle drawing and then tried using their pencils to add the colour and shading in.

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While we were working on the turtle video both kids asked about other drawing clips that Jan Brett had created and I searched and found her website where they have a listed a number of  different ones on it – Jan Brett How to draw videos.

We have already watched the Tiger one – my daughter wants to try that and the Rabbit one.

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I have a feeling we are going to be trying a number of her drawing clips. If you are looking for drawing videos to use with your kids take a look at hers. Both the kids and I like the way she breaks the drawings down and we appreciate all the extra information that she shares while doing the drawings.

Admin – Please note this is in No way linked to Jan Brett, we happened to discover her drawing videos and think they are great