Coloring 3D Kid Craft

By Donna White

Add pizzazz to your coloring pictures by giving them a 3 D look and feel.  Watch your child beam with excitement when the make their pictures come alive.

Age

6 and up

This project is rated Medium to do.

What you need

• Pages from a favorite coloring book
• Crayons

What you do

1. Cut out a page from one of your favorite coloring books.   
2. Color in the drawing as you usually would. We call this applying the base color.
3. Once the picture has been colored go back and add the shading and highlighting.  To do this you will need to select one lighter darker  and one darker shade of the base color.
4. Assume that the light is coming from above, as the sun in the sky, and start shading using a darker version of the colored in section.  For instance, a black crayon was used to shade the grey mouse. 

Shade:  Anything behind or underneath another object. 

For instance in the example:  The mouse chin casts a shadow on the shirt, the shirt casts a shadow on the arms, the hands casts a shadow on the donut and the mouse's belly casts a shadow on his pants.

5. Now apply the highlights to the drawing using the lighter shade of the base color. Again assuming the light is coming from above, as the sun in the sky, start highlighting where the sun would hit.  One hint is the opposite of where you just shaded.

Highlight: Anything above or on top of another object.

For Instance in the Example:  All the places where you see pink or yellow.

Helpful hints

• Have patience there is no wrong answer here.
• This is a great way to use more crayons in your 64 count boxes.
• When selecting crayons think first of what you would like the object to be colored.  For example the pants will be blue.  Select a light, medium and dark shade of blue.  Use the medium shade for the base color.  Highlight with the lighter shade (white and yellow often look nice) and shade with the darker shade.