Using watercolours is a really fun way to make a striking and effective background for any silhouette picture. By adding the black silhouette at the front of the picture, your watercolours can become a beautiful sunrise or sunset. We used this technique to make mosque pictures, but you could try it with any skyline.
To make your watercolour silhouette pictures, you will need:
- Watercolour paints (We used this brand. You could also try liquid water colours or palette watercolours and see the difference between each one)
- Watercolour paper
- Print out your silhouettes (you can download some of ours here) or draw your own freehand.
- Scissors
- Glue stick
- Paint brush
- Pot of water
This activity is suitable for both kids and adults. R and I had fun painting these pictures together, and the other boys have enjoyed making these in the past too.
To make the background, you can use the technique of squeezing out a few lines of paint onto the paper like this:
Then take your wet brush, and smooth it across each colour to let them spread and merge together.
Of course if you’re three years old, then you might want to just take your paints and brushes and go with it in your own style like R!
Whatever design you go for, once it’s finished – set aside your watercolour background to dry, and cut out your silhouette templates. Once they are fully dry, you’re going to stick these down at the bottom of the picture to create the foreground.
And you’re done! Here are some of ours:
You can talk about the different colours for the sunrise and sunset, and link it in to talking to the kids about different times of the day like Fajr time and Ishraq, or Maghrib time (these are dawn, sunrise and sunset for any non-Muslim readers who may not know)
You could also use the pictures to stick on the front of a card, for Ramadan or Eid.
For more Arabic and Islamic crafts for kids, make sure that you’re following our board on Pinterest.
You might also like:
- Turkish Blue Mosque Craft
- 10 Ways to “Make Your Own Mosque” with kids
- Practising the Arabic Alphabet with Plasticine
- Arabic Alphabet Craft : Decorating Candles
- Alif is for Asad: Paper Plate Lion Craft
Follow Anna – In The Playroom’s board Arabic / Islamic / Ramadan activities for Kids on Pinterest.
And don’t forget to pin this idea for later
Anna Marikar, mum of four and seasoned blogger, has spent over a decade sharing her parenting journey and passion for kid-friendly crafts and free printables.
Her easy-to-follow craft ideas and practical parenting advice have transformed In The Playroom into a cherished resource for parents.
Very interesting activity! Need to get my girls use the watercolours more now that they can do it outside. I am not very comfortable letting them do it when inside. thank you for linking your post with the #pinitparty
Love this! I want to try it at our community center for a pre-Eid craft. I noticed that your silhouette in the examples above look smaller than the ones that we can download. Did you shrink them? Or are you use really large water color paper (larger than 9×12)? Thanks
Hi! The linked ones and the ones we used for these pictures are actually slightly different, because printable file was from a previous year but let me see if I can get some smaller ones uploaded today. The paper we used was just normal A4 sized watercolour paper