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Andy Warhol For Kids | Campbell’s Soup Can Art Project

Andy Warhol for Kids

Description

With this lesson, I managed to teach 50 preschoolers about Andy Warhol and his famous Campbell’s Soup Cans artworks using directed drawing and painting. If you aren’t a school teacher and planning to do this lesson with your own children at home, it will also be very successful. Take your time, walk the kids through everything step-by-step, and help them when they need it – I know you’ll be proud of their work, and they will enjoy creating these fun, colorful Andy Warhol soup cans.

This project has extra credit! Check it out!

Today was the day – Andy Warhol for kids. Not just any kids – 50 preschoolers, to be exact! With the help of their classroom teachers, I managed to teach 50 preschoolers about Andy Warhol and his famous Campbell’s Soup Cans artworks using directed drawing and painting. These preschoolers are learning about 3D shapes, so we drew cylinders and turned them into Andy Warhol soup cans. I’m thrilled with how they turned out. Please note that any links that take you to Amazon are affiliate links (see disclosure here).

Andy Warhol for Kids | Campbell's soup can art lesson. An Art with Jenny K. lesson.

Free PDF Download: This entire art lesson is also put together in a PDF on Teachers Pay Teachers (for free). You can download it HERE if you’d like this lesson in that format.

Andy Warhol For Kids | Materials

To do this project, I used the following supplies:

I have found that an easy way to manage materials for younger children is to have everything already out and ready when they come in – if possible. I think of it as setting the table for dinner – everything is out and ready! Before all the kids came in, I had the tables all “set” and ready to go.

Andy Warhol for Kids

Andy Warhol For Kids | Introduction and Book

As the kids came in, they sat down on the floor, and I read them the book Uncle Andy’s by James Warhola (Andy Warhol’s real nephew wrote this book). Before teaching the lesson, I had gone through and underlined the parts I wanted to read aloud. If I had read the entire book, I would have lost the kids’ attention – it’s a great story but a little long for preschool children to sit through in its entirety.

Andy Warhol for Kids

Andy Warhol For Kids | Directed Drawing

After reading the book, the kids went to their tables, and we got started. To begin, I walked the children through step-by-step how to draw the soup can. We did this with black crayons so we didn’t have to spend all our time erasing with pencils (you can adapt this for your age and needs). Here are the steps for how to draw the soup can.

      1. Using the black crayon, draw an oval at the top.
      2. Draw a straight (vertical) line on each side of the oval you just drew.
      3. Connect the two lines with a little “smile” at the bottom.
      4. Draw a small circle in the center.
      5. Add a curved line in the middle (much like the bottom line in Step 3) but skip over the circle.
      6. Finally, add a smaller oval inside the first oval (at the top) and color the space in black.
Andy Warhol for Kids

After drawing the soup can, I had the kids write “Tomato Soup” along the bottom. For older children, I would also have them include “Campbell’s” at the top. After the cylinder was drawn, I had them use a red crayon to draw a red line along the bottom, and we used the yellow crayons to online the word “soup.”

Andy Warhol For Kids | Paint

Now that the soup cans were drawn, the kids got to paint – the moment they had been waiting for.  To start, we painted the small circle in the middle yellow.

Tip: When using watercolor paints, start with your lightest color and work to your darkest. This keeps the water clean longer and the paints cleaner as well.

Tip: When using watercolor paints with small children, remove the black and brown (if possible) from the watercolor trays. This will help keep the painting cleaner.

Then we painted the top portion of the can red, and then finally, each student could pick out their own color for the background of their soup can. I encourage them to do a solid color so that the images would “pop” (pun intended) when the paintings were all complete.

Andy Warhol for Kids

This is a great time to point out that the background and the “back” of the paper are not the same things. No matter how many times I teach this, it still feels like when I say to paint the background, a student turns their page over and starts painting on the back – you can’t review this too often – especially for younger children. The kids and I had a great time, and I know your students will too! Of course, be creative with this project in any way it inspires you. Take a look at some of the finished soup cans…

Andy Warhol for Kids

I did this lesson with 50 pre-K students. The lesson was too challenging for the 3-year-olds – but they had fun trying it and playing with the paint. This Andy Warhol lesson was perfect for the 4-year-old and 5-year-old children.

Most likely, you won’t be doing this with 50 kids at a time (for your sake, I hope not), and this will make it a lot easier for you. Take your time, walk the kids through everything step-by-step and help them when they need it – I know you’ll be proud of their work, and they will enjoy creating these fun, colorful Andy Warhol soup cans.

Andy Warhol For Kids | Great for all ages!

If you aren’t a school teacher and planning to do this lesson with your own children at home, it will also be very successful. Before I did this lesson with the 50 kids, I had tried it with my own daughter (7 yrs old) and her two friends (6yrs old and 8 yrs old).

Andy Warhol for Kids

This lesson is easy to adapt for older students. For starters, you can change the scale and the supplies of this project for older children. If you have larger paper, students could draw multiple cans on one page (say 4 to a page, for example). Then your children could do multiple Andy Warhol soup cans on one page.

YouTube Video: I made a fun VIDEO that you or your child can follow along with that takes you step-by-step through the entire process of this Andy Warhol for kids painting. You can find it on my YouTube channel HERE.

Also, don’t forget you can download the lesson in PDF format HERE.

Ideas: Older students could also use acrylic paint instead of watercolor. Also, if supplies permit, you could have them paint on canvas instead of paper. Older students could also incorporate the word “Campbell’s” in cursive at the top.

When Andy Warhol first exhibited his Campbell’s Soup Cans, he displayed 32 of them – each with a different name of soup on the can. At that time, Campbell’s made 32 flavors of soup – each of his paintings reflected one of those flavors. You could assign different flavors to your students (depending on their age), or you could have them make up flavors!

Please be sure you tag me on social media if you share examples of how you’ve used my ideas or projects with your students/children. Tag me (@artwithjennyk) on IG, FB, or Twitter, and you can also use the hashtag #artwithjennyk. I love to see what you make.

Thanks for reading!

Jenny K.

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Extra Credit!

Andy Warhol collaboration poster from Jenny K.

Andy Warhol Soup Can Collaboration Poster 

Poster #1 -Large poster (30 pieces) with assigned colors. Students will follow the colors assigned using a color key on each page. I have assigned purple as the background color. If you’d like to change that, have students exchange the “p” for whatever color you’d like the background to be. The final size is approx. 29” x 36” (the exact size will depend on your printer settings).

Poster #2 – Large poster (30 pieces) with colors NOT assigned. Let your students color the poster whatever colors they want (or that you assign). The final size is approx. 29” x 36” (exact printer size will depend on your printer settings). This option involves a lot of collaboration among your students to produce a consistent final poster.

Poster #3 – Individual size poster (4 pieces). Use this option if you’d like your students to make several smaller-sized soup can posters (instead of one large poster). Each child would get four pieces. Make enough copies for your entire class and assign colors or let each student color their soup can (four pages) however they want. The final size is approximately 14” x 14” (the exact size will depend on your printer settings). You can then display the final results as a large collection of “Pop Art” soup cans—much like Warhol did!

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