The Hug – Gustav Klimt The Kiss Inspired Art Project

Have you ever seen a painting covered in gold and amazing patterns? That’s what the famous artist Gustav Klimt created with his painting The Kiss, two people sharing a warm hug wrapped in an incredible golden blanket!

Today, we’re going to make our own special version called “The Hug”! Don’t worry, we won’t need real gold (that would be way too expensive!). Instead, we’ll use fun art supplies like gold chalk markers, shiny washi tape, and colorful markers to create something that sparkles and shines just like Klimt’s masterpiece.

This is a wonderful art lesson that can be done with kids as young as kidnergarten as we offer a few differentiation options to make it easy peasy.

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How to Make The Hug – Gustav Klimt The Kiss Inspired Art Project

What you need:

• our printable art template
• scissors
• glue stick
• white paper or cardstock
• painter’s tape (the kind that peels off easily)
• paint sticks, crayons, colored pencils, or markers in various colors (blue, purple, yellow, orange, black)
• blue paint
• sponge (for stamping squares)
• gold washi tape
• gold chalk marker or gold paint pen

Step by Step Tutorial

Prepare a piece of white paper or cardstock and secure the edges with painter’s tape (the kind you can easily peel off later).

Now let the kids start coloring the background! We used blue paint stick to color the bottom part.

You can use any technique for making the background, or even give your students an option to choose for themselves. We made this with watercolors, chalk pastels, and even just using a sheet of colored paper for the youngest students, and all worked out well.

You can mix colors to make a gradient or just use one color for the whole background.

Klimt is all about textures and patterns so we’re adding some stamped squares to the background. You can cut a sponge into smaller squares and have your students use that or you can use the round sponge brushes.

All done with the background. Let it dry and once it’s dry carefully peel off the tape.

We have two templates for this art lesson, one with the penguin and the base pre made, just waiting to be colored – making it perfect for younger kids or for when you don’t have a lot of time for your lesson.

The other is a guided drawing showing the kids how they can draw a pair of hugging penguins on their own.

Once the kids have the penguins ready, have them color the parts that would normally be black with yellow (or another bright color).

Draw some straight vertical and horizontal lines with a black marker on the penguin’s body over the yellow colored parts.

Use the black marker to fill in some of the sections you created with your lines.

Grab an orange marker and add more rectangles to the design, then color in the penguin’s bill and feet with the same orange.

Now for the special Klimt magic! Use gold washi tape or gold chalk marker to color parts of the penguins body in gold.

Pretty sweet right?

Have kids color the iceberg part, draw swirls, spirals, and curvy lines all over it to create that flowing Klimt pattern. This is a great chance to have the kids observe the Kiss painting and recognize what kinds of patterns Klimt used.

Cut out the penguins and the purple part.

Glue the purple iceberg piece to the bottom portion of the background.

Finally, glue the colorful penguins onto the purple iceberg.

Stand back and admire the golden penguin hug masterpiece!