Tag Archives: painting

Jun27

Watercolour Rainbow

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Painting a rainbow.

Painting a rainbow.

We pulled out the watercolour paints today to paint a rainbow picture. A likes to paint, and she likes dipping the paintbrush into the water, and then watching the water change colour as she uses more colours. She painted a beautiful rainbow using lots of bright colours, even two shades each of blue and green.

Painting rainbow hair.

Painting rainbow hair.

Once her rainbow picture was finished, she painted a picture of what she would look like with rainbow coloured hair. I can imagine her coming home as a teenager with hair this colour….

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Jun5

Paint Stampers

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IMG_0262Using stampers with paint can be lots of fun. We have a few packs of stampers. In this set there is a heart, whale, star, butterfly, snail and smiley sun. Each stamp has a handle which makes them easier to use for young children, and it helps to reduce the amount of paint that gets on their hands during the activity.

Paint and stamps on sponges ready for stamping.

Paint and stamps on sponges ready for stamping.

I like to put the paint onto some clean kitchen sponges to use with the stamps. This helps with even paint coverage of the stamp, and makes it less likely there will be too much paint on the stamp to see the shape.

Using a stamper.

Using a stamper.

Both L and A got right into the stamping. A placed her stamps randomly all over her paper, while L made an earth picture. She used the whale stamp to create some water, before adding some whales jumping out of it, and there are stars and suns in the sky, and snails on the ground. She told me that she added the hearts to indicate that she would love the world to be full of nature’s wonders like whales for ever (she is environmentally conscious).

L's earth painting.

L’s earth painting.

Jun5

Paint Scrapers

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IMG_0266Big L’s birthday is coming up and A wanted to make some special wrapping paper to wrap his presents in. She chose to use metallic paints and paint scrapers for this activity.

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The paint scrapers we used.

The paint scrapers we used.

Spreading the paint.

Spreading the paint.

I bought the paint scrapers at Riot Art & Craft for a few dollars. They are sturdy plastic and each one has a different edge to make different patterns.

A used a sponge brush to spread the paint over the paper, and then while it was still wet she used the paint scrapers to make patterns in the paint. Most of her paintings were done in one colour, but the one I like the best has three metallic colours. It’s a bit hard to tell in the photos, but the metallic paint looks fantastic!

Creating a square pattern.

Creating a square pattern.

A really liked using the paint scrapers in one direction, and then in the perpendicular direction to create a pattern of squares.

Using one of the scrapers.

Using one of the scrapers.

L and A also did some paintings using normal paint and the paint scrapers. They both created some lovely artworks using this method. The patterns that the paint scrapers left were more obvious in the normal paint than in the metallic paint.

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May12

Paper Bowl Spider

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IMG_9905A harmless spider made using a paper bowl and some pipe cleaners.

Painting the bowl.

Painting the bowl.

Hole punched side ready for legs.

Hole punched side ready for legs.

First A painted the bowl on the outside, and once that was mostly dry, she turned the bowl over and painted the inside of the bowl. She used a thick black paint. Once the paint was dry, I used a single hole punch to make four holes down each side of the bowl. A inserted half a black pipe cleaner into each hole, bending them a little on the inside and taping them down. I helped A to bend these legs into the shape she wanted, with little feet.

Adding googly eyes.

Adding googly eyes.

I thought googly eyes on the top would finish off the spider, but A wanted it to be a red-back spider, which are quite common here, so she also added a red feather to the back of her spider. A said that this spider is the Mummy spider, and she has asked to hang it in her room with her baby egg carton spiders.

May8

Painting with Marbles

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Blobs of paint.

Blobs of paint.

For these paintings each of the kids had a cardboard tray that we laid a piece of paper in the bottom of, then blobbed paint onto the paper. A requested a lot more paint than L.

Rolling the marbles about.

Rolling the marbles about.

They each chose some marbles to place in their tray. We have a collection of small marbles, and a few larger ones, over which the girls argued. The largest marbles made larger tracks in the paint, but the size of the marbles didn’t really matter for this painting technique. Both L and A placed more than one marble in at a time, and then tilted the tray about to make the marbles roll around. If they tilted the tray too fast the marbles would sometimes fly right out, and we ended up with a few splashes of paint, but that’s what the muck mat is for.

One of L's marble paintings.

One of L’s marble paintings.

Once the marbles ran through the blobbed paint, they transported the paint all over the paper, making lovely patterns. As A had used so much paint, some of her marbles actually got stuck in the paint, and we had to push them along. It also meant that the paint colours mixed together and covered the paper, allowing the marbles to form tracks in the paint, rather than making tracks with the paint.

These are easy and fun paintings to do, and they look great!

A's paper with lots of paint.

A’s paper with lots of paint.

A rolling her marbles through the paint.

A rolling her marbles through the paint.

More rolling marbles.

More rolling marbles.

 

A's finished marble track paintings.

A’s finished marble track paintings.

May3

Rainy Day Pictures

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IMG_9777While I was walking down one of the hallways at L’s school I spotted some wonderful rainy day art on the wall done by one of the classes. I liked them so much we tried them at home. At school they had used oil pastels and edicol dye, but we substituted watercolour paints, as we didn’t have the dye.

L drawing her picture.

L drawing her picture.

First we drew a picture using the oil pastels. Most of the picture was drawn in white, including the clouds and raindrops. L put big bolts of lightning on her first one too. I also drew a picture and added a rainbow to it as an example for A of what we could do. A copied this picture, adding rainbows to her art.

Adding watercolours paint.

Adding watercolours paint.

Once we finished drawing with the oil pastels, we used watercolour paint to cover the paper. The oil pastels resist the paint, so that only the blank paper is coloured, and the picture emerges clearly. I used black and blue for my clouds, light blue for the sky and light green for the hills. L made her first picture very blue with deep black clouds at the top. She also added some black in the background, giving her picture a cityscape look. She told me that the swirls at the bottom are from the drops of rain, but I think they look like scorch marks from her lightning. A had one picture copied from mine with black clouds, blue sky and green hills, but her other one was almost all blue. For this one she added some purple across the bottom, mixing it with the blue, and told me it was a river with lots of fish.

A's second picture.

A’s second picture.

My rainy day painting.

My rainy day painting.

L's thunder storm.

L’s thunder storm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A has a tendency to use a lot of paint in her art, and this left her paper quite wet and a bit soggy in places. Mine and L’s paintings dried quickly, but we had to wait a while for A’s. We have our rainy day pictures displayed on our living room wall.

Apr7

Painting Pillow Cases

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3D glitter fabric paints.

3D glitter fabric paints.

3D fabric paint with glitter, oh we had to try that! It came in a pack of six colours with easy to use nozzle applicators. I bought some cheap white pillow cases for the kids to paint on, and I placed some thick cardboard into the pillow case to prevent the paint from running through to the other side. I used pegs around the edges to keep the pillow case flat while the kids were painting.

The tubes only needed light pressure to squeeze the paint out, but A was a little heavy-handed at times, and her paint went on very thickly. She didn’t like the look of this, so she took a paintbrush, and spread the paint out over the pillow case. This made a glitter rainbow that she was very pleased with. She asked me to squeeze more paint out in lines all over the pillow case, and she used the paintbrush to mix it. She had lots of fun doing this, though it meant that the 3D look of the paint was lost.

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Almost finished.

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Spreading the paint.

L preferred to paint a picture on her pillow case. She drew mountains and hills, the sun, grass and herself standing next to her trampoline. She was much better able to control the flow of paint than A, and she even mixed some of the colours to create new colours.

L painting her picture.

L painting her picture.

Once they were done painting we left the pillow cases to dry. We could have painted on the other side after a few hours, but we chose not to. We followed the instructions on the paint pack, leaving them to dry for a couple of days prior to washing them. Once they were washed and dried, the kids put them on their pillows. Due to the 3D nature of the paint, it is raised a little and the kids said it feels funny to sleep on. This is why I asked them not to paint on both sides. They can have the painted side on display during the day, but at night, they just flip the pillow over and sleep on the smooth, unpainted side. They are both happy with this.

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Mar17

Monster Paintings

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The hand-print monsters worked so well, I thought we would have a go at painting monsters. And if it involves paint, A is always keen!

A's monster.

A’s monster.

A started by painting a monster with lots of legs and arms, and then she told me she was going to paint a mermaid monster, but then she changed her mind, and painted a pink, blue, green and purple blob. When it was dry, she turned this blob into a monster using markers, paper cut-out teeth and eyes. She even added a heart on the monster’s chest. She also used markers on her first painting to add details such as eyelashes, pupils and a tongue.

A's monster.

A’s blob monster.

We made some squish paintings to use for creating more paint monsters using markers after they were dry.

L made a magical cat monster with blue and yellow magic all around it, and a large green tail. There was a monster with one eye in its bottom, and lots and lots of brains all over its body. According to L, this monster also has the ability to shoot brains from its sides to defeat its enemies. Her third monster was a hypnotising monster, with swirls for eyes and nose and green spiky horns and swirly arms.  If you look at this monster for too long you would come under it’s control, and you would have to do anything that it wanted you to. L has a very good imagination!

L's magical cat monster.

L’s magical cat monster.

L's brain monster.

L’s brain monster.

L's flying monster.

L’s hypnotising monster.

Mar16

Paint Bellows and Sprinkle Painting

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We like to experiment with different types of painting. Today we tried using paint bellows and a screen with a toothbrush to create some rainbow paintings.

Paint bellows.

Paint bellows.

We used canvases for this, and as it had the potential to be quite messy, we decided to paint outside with art smocks on. This was a very good choice, given how much paint the kids managed to get on themselves despite the smocks!

Using the paint bellows.

Using the paint bellows.

A used the paint bellows on her canvas. We only have three, so she used three colours at a time, and then I washed them out, and she used three different colours. She had a little trouble drawing the paint into the bellows, but she really enjoyed blowing the paint out onto the canvas. It made lots of sprays of colours with some larger blobs of paint. She continued using different colours until she had a nice rainbow of colour right across the canvas.

A's paint bellows canvas.

A’s paint bellows canvas.

Close up of the bellows painting.

Close up of the bellows painting.

Using the screen and toothbrush.

Using the screen and toothbrush.

L used the screen and toothbrush on her canvas to create a sprinkle painting. She used one colour at a time because the screen was very small. She put some paint onto the brush and rubbed it across the screen, whilst holding the screen fairly close to the canvas, but not touching it. This produced a fine mist of paint directed onto the canvas. She washed and dried the screen and brush between colours, and continued using paint until her canvas was covered by rainbow mist.

L's sprinkle painting.

L’s sprinkle painting.

Close-up of the sprinkle painting.

Close-up of the sprinkle painting.

The screen and toothbrush produced a much finer droplet pattern than the paint bellows, but both methods created pleasing paintings.

Mar16

Hand-print Monsters

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Two hand print monsters.

Two hand print monsters.

Paint hand prints.

Paint hand prints.

 

 

 

 

 

A was more than happy to paint her hands to make hand prints for this activity! She made some paint hand prints on some white paper, and we put these aside to dry. She also added some fingerprints to one of the paintings. Another of her hand print paintings was pretty messy, as she placed her palm on the paper over and over again, but it was still useful for making monsters out of.

Painting her hand for the prints.

Painting her hand for the prints.

Creating a blue hand print.

Creating a blue hand print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the paint had dried, we used markers to create monsters from the hand prints. A used one of her paintings with the hand prints upside down, using the fingers for monster legs. She gave each leg some claws, and each monster a head and spikes. These are very happy monsters.

L didn’t do the painting with us, but A let L use the messy hand print painting to make a monster out of too. L enjoyed drawing her monsters. Her green monster has eyes on each one of it’s spiked tentacles, and a really big bottom, while its pink friend is a one-eyed blob monster.

L's monster drawing using A's messy hand print painting.

L’s monster drawing using A’s messy hand print painting.

Two hand print monster with fingerprint eyes.

Two hand print monster with fingerprint eyes.