Want a project that teaches about art history, is broken up nicely into several engaging steps, and has a little action in it for the last step? You’ll love teaching the Paul Klee-inspired Cat and Bird drawing project.

We studied Paul Klee and learned about some of his paintings. We read Geraldine Elschner’s The Cat and the Bird book 

and looked at and talked about some of his famous paintings, like Senecio,

Castle and Sun,

and Cat and Bird.

I’ve since found a great Paul Klee intro clip that we’ll use next time, Artrageous With Nate’s Who Was Paul Klee?

Karen Griffith created a very useful step by step guide to draw a cat and bird inspired by Paul Klee. We used this as our guide then added lots of details for our cat we just created. (Does your cat love roller skating, climbing trees, riding roller coasters, etc.) We started our drawings in pencil, re-drew them with Sharpies, then colored something wonderful on a coffee filter with regular (non-Sharpie) markers.

When the students finished their drawings on a coffee filter (most of the coffee filter filled using at least 10 different colors of markers), they placed their colored coffee filter on their drawing (with a paper towel underneath it.) Then they surrounded their coffee filter with bleeding tissue squares. Then, their favorite part, they got to spray all of it with a spray bottle filled with water. They loved that!

I showed them in the next class period what their drawings looked like once the coffee filter and the bleeding tissue squares came off. It creates a beautiful watercolor/tie dyed look.

Have fun making your art! Please tag me at @wowartproject on Twitter or @juliaforsythart on Instagram to show me how your creations turned out!