Polar Bear with Northern Lights

Every Color by Erin Eitter Kono

For this lesson, we'll start with the book Every Color by Erin Eitter Kono and then draw a polar with a colorful background.

In the story, the polar bear is unhappy because everything is white where he lives. He longs for color... play the video for the rest of the story!

Like Bear in the story, we probably think of the Arctic, where polar bears live, as being all white - lots of snow and ice. But in the sky at night, you can often see the Northern Lights, a beautiful natural phenomenon which lights up the sky with incredible color! No-one knows exactly what causes this. The pictures below show the beautiful colors of the Arctic Northern Lights.

And now to our project...

For this project, we'll be drawing a polar bear surrounded by the Northern Lights. We will use short black lines to show the texture of the near's fur. You also can put trees on either side of your bear. The trees are in the background so they will be smaller than our bear. We also want to leave plenty of space in the sky for our colors of the Northern Lights.

You will need:

  • white paper

  • a black Sharpie, crayon or oil pastel to draw with

  • watercolor paints or crayons for the sky