high-school-art – The Schoolin' Swag Blog

Our family loves visiting National Parks, and my son loves creating artwork. Thus, the National Parks Watercoloring Kit from Timberdoodle seemed like the perfect match.

What is the National Parks Watercoloring Kit?

The National Parks Watercoloring Kit includes a book with 21 pictures of scenes from various national parks, with lines drawn on them to help guide the painting process; a very nice watercolor kit; and online video tutorials and sample pictures.

The book is spiral-bound at the top, and the pages are all nice, heavy watercolor paper so the paint does not bleed through. The front of the book includes instructions and a QR code that takes you to the website where you can view reference pictures and a step-by-step tutorial for each picture. There are also extra pages in the back to practice the different skills and test colors before you begin painting on the actual picture.

The watercolor kit is a very nice set that includes 50 different colors, plus various brushes, a sponge, and mixing trays.

Our Experience with the National Parks Watercoloring Kit

My twelve-year-old loves art, and I was excited to surprise him with this kit. I helped him set up the computer (he does not have a smartphone to access the QR code) and told him to let me know if he had any questions.

He was able to open and set up the kit, pick the painting he wanted to work on, find the video, and start painting without any additional assistance.

He worked on the first painting over several sessions and finished it one day while I was not home. He was so excited to share it with me when I got home that he brought it outside to the car when I pulled into the driveway.

The painting turned out beautifully, and he was excited to keep going, and he is currently working his way through the book. He enjoyed the videos and found them mostly easy to follow, though he mentioned that they are a little bit lengthy in parts. At other times, they moved faster than he did, but I reminded him that he could pause the video at any point.

He also mentioned that the watercolor kit was great, but the colors are a little different from the ones in the videos, so he had to figure out which of his shades to use to get the same results.

Thoughts and Recommendations

Timberdoodle recommends this kit for 8^th grade and up, and I think it is great for those ages, but it could also be used by middle school students who have a strong interest in art. The level of detail and skill in the course would be too challenging for most students below the middle school level.

You can focus on just the art program or easily make it the basis for a study of the different parks and the scientific and historical importance of each park.

His first completed picture was a scene from the Grand Canyon.

For a high school student, this can be used for credit on their transcript or as a fun extra project.

As a parent, I loved that it is an open and go program that does not require me to be an artist. I also appreciated the fact that the finished products were beautiful and will make great Christmas gifts for grandparents and other relatives.

If you have a student who loves art or the national parks, or even a student you would like to encourage to try art, go to Timberdoodle to learn more and order your kit today.