With all of the exciting news about Spider-Man finally joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, now’s a great time to celebrate your friendly neighborhood wallcrawler! This simple watercolor resist portrait of the webslinger can be a fun art project for the entire family.
You can challenge your older kids to draw and paint Spider-Man on their own, or help a small Spidey fan by setting up the drawing and glue the night before.
What You Need
- White/school glue (Elmer’s Glue)
- Watercolor paper
- Pencil
- Watercolors
Use a pencil to lightly draw Spider-Man’s mask.
I’ve found it works best to start the project the night before you want to paint to give the glue time to dry, especially if you’re drawing Spidey’s face for a younger child to paint later.
Grab the pencil and watercolor paper and lightly draw only the outline of the face itself, along with Spider-Man’s eyes. (You don’t have to draw the lines of the web yet.) For a reference for the mask, along with a guide to drawing the webs exactly right, check out Marvel artist Will Sliney’s excellent how-to below.
I created a little gif on how to draw @Marvel Spider-Man’s webs. You can view it here http://t.co/5LKigRazl7 pic.twitter.com/SppMVB8rlO
— Will Sliney (@WillSliney) February 10, 2015
Trace the mask outline with glue.
Once you’ve finished drawing the outline of the mask and eyes, trace over the pencil with a thick line of glue.
Next, use the guide above to draw the webs across the mask with just the glue only. The web lines are a little easier to freehand with the glue, and this minimizes the pencil marks you might have peeking through the dried glue later.
Allow the glue to dry completely.
Time to paint!
Once the glue has dried clear, it’s time to grab the watercolors and get painting. I preferred to paint Spider-Man with his classic colors, while my daughter had her own take on his design.
Spidey’s eyes are typically white with a thick black outline, so I traced the inside of the lines with the black watercolor.
These were my first attempts at drawing Spider-Man, and thankfully the watercolors are a little forgiving for completing the portrait. I’m already thinking of setting up two more pictures because my daughter had so much fun painting the first one—and so did I!
