Shapes Butterfly Art

Spring is already here!! With the arrival of spring comes lots of cherry blossoms, tulips daffodils, and other beautiful colorful flowers! It looks very beautiful here in the Pacific Northwest. So this time we wanted to explore art related to the spring season. Spring is one of the best seasons of the year to explore nature with kids and learn a lot about it. My kids love to watch the butterflies and bumble bees perched on the flowers. My younger one wanted to draw a butterfly when she saw one flying around in our backyard. And since she is in pre-K my older one suggested that we teach her to draw with some easy shapes and I felt it was a great idea! That's how this shapes butterfly came to life!:-)

And I believe this will be a fun, colorful, cute butterfly art project to do with little kids and teach them how to make simple drawings out of basic shapes.(#preschoolart, #shapesbutterflyart, #springart, #natureartwithkids)

First, here are the supplies:

• a piece of paper

• a pencil and eraser

• something to color with (ex. crayons, colored pencils, markers)

• if you are going to do the symmetry method, you will need a window or lightbox

Here are the steps to make your easy butterfly:

1. Draw a circle at the top of your page. Draw the eyes and mouth of the butterfly to make a cute face.😊

(Tip: Use bottle caps or any small circular objects if it is not very easy to get good circles with freehand drawing.)

1. Draw 2 curved lines starting from the lower edge of the circle (face of butterfly) so that you can get the shape of the body as shown below.

3. Draw 2 big triangles, one on each side, for wings. Make sure the triangles are symmetrical while drawing. (Tip: Also find the symmetrical drawing method mentioned below after this approach)

4. Draw 2 circles one slightly bigger than the other inside each triangle. Alternatively, you can draw a heart shape also inside the triangle. Also, draw 2 small leaf shapes as shown below.

(Tip: Use bottle caps or any small circular objects if it is not very easy to get good circles with freehand drawing. It may be a little challenging for very young kids. So we can use some simple tools to make it easier.)

(Tip 2: In order to draw the triangles and inner circles, we used the reflection method by folding the paper in the middle of the butterfly's body, then reversing it and placing it on the window, a light source, and just tracing the shapes.)

5. Add two swirls on the top of your circle head for the antenna.

6. Color!

Symmetry - Learning to draw using the Symmetrical Approach

This drawing can also be used to teach how to draw an object in a symmetrical way.

We just discovered this while we were working on the previous drawing method. And I thought this would be a better way to draw this butterfly. We can teach kids the concept of symmetry and reflection through this art.

Here are the steps :

1. Draw one half of the butterfly, body , face and wings

2. Fold the paper in the center and place it opposite to a light source (on a window)

3. Trace on the reflection

4. Yay! you can see the full butterfly.

This is how we can draw using the symmetry and reflection method.

Here are some more shape ideas to use with this project. To be precise, butterflies have 4 wings. Though we had come up with the previous way of drawing before, we thought a 4 winged butterfly would be better. And I thought why not try drawing one with a pentagon!!😊

Using Triangles-Here is the modified one with triangles!

Using Pentagons wings

Using Oval shaped wings

Here are some fun facts about butterflies that you can share with your kids once you finish this art project:

1.There are nearly 20,000 butterfly species. And around 575 species are found in the United states.

Can you spot and identify the butterfly species found in your backyard this spring and summer?

2. Butterflies use their feet to taste.

3. Butterflies only live for a few weeks

4.The most common butterfly in the US is the Cabbage White.

5.Butterflies have a liquid diet.

6. Butterflies actually have four wings, not two

Also stay tuned to get the best books to learn about butterflies in my next post!!