Painting Archives - Page 22 of 22

Roller painting with cars

10/04/2011 by Cathy James 12 Comments

We had fun this week roller-painting with cars. We started off with paint on some plates and we dipped the cars’ wheels in before we took them for a drive on the paper. Then B decided we should put some splodges of paint directly on the paper and let the cars roll through.

The children loved the process and there was lots of chat about traffic jams and short cuts – and the finished result was beautiful too.

With sunny weather forecast for the coming week I’m thinking this would be a great activity for outside messy play. How about a long roll of paper laid down the slide or a ramp, with the cars rolling down?

Have you ever tried painting with cars with your children?

Salad spinner painting

05/12/2010 by Cathy James 4 Comments

This craft was meant to be. We’ve wanted to have a go at spinning art for a while, so last week I went out to try and buy a salad spinner. As we were intending to get it covered in paint I didn’t want to spend a fortune on one but in any case fate intervened. As I walked passed a charity shop, guess what I spied on the shelf inside? One salad spinner! Sold.

Salad Spinner Painting.

You will need: a salad spinner, paper plates or circles of paper/card to fit in the spinner, runny paint, glitter is optional

You can use one big circle of card which fills the whole of the base of the spinner, or you can put several smaller circles of card in the base and put paint on each one. These smaller ones are good if you’re making gift tags.

1. Check if your salad spinner has drainage holes in the botton and if it does, sit it on a plate or tray to catch any paint.

2. Place your paper plate or circle of paper / card in the bottom of the salad spinner basket. It’s a good idea to hold it in place with a piece of Bluetac.

3. Put some blobs of the runny paint on the plate / paper / card.

4. Replace the lid of the spinner and get spinning.

5. Take off the lid to check your design. Do you want to spin again? Add some different colours? Sprinkle some glitter on while the paint is still wet?

We’re going to use our designs to make Christmas decorations and gift tags, by punching a hole and adding some ribbon.

This spinning technique is also great for trying out colour mixing – add a blob of blue and yellow and spin to make shades of green.

You could make a fantastic mobile from your paper plates, or turn them into planets to make a space scene.

Have you tried salad spinner painting? How did you use your designs?

happily shared with Tot Tuesday and ABC and 123

Marble painting

24/11/2010 by Cathy James 4 Comments

We love marble painting. We love the crazy patterns you can make, we love the roly-poly fun and we love how vibrant the final paintings are. Marble painting is a good craft activity to try with children who usually prefer action play to something artistic – you might just find that this rolling-action appeals, when normal painting or drawing doesn’t.

If you have a group of children you can try this on a grand scale: go outside and have the children sit around a huge piece of paper. Add some blobs of paint around the perimeter of the paper and give the children some marbles. They can roll the marbles to each other across the paper and make a collaborative design.

For a smaller scale version at home, we find a roasting tray is a good size to fit an A4 piece of paper, and of course the raised edges of the tin help to contain the marble. Add a blob of paint and practise your co-ordination as you tilt the tray to roll the marble through the paint. What patterns can you make if you add different colours of paint, or roll 2 or 3 marbles at once?

This is a fun, creative activity to try just for the pleasure of crafting but it creates wonderful pictures you can use to make into something else too: bookmarks, greetings cards and postcards, gift tags? Come back tomorrow and see how we transformed our marble paintings into a mathematical display.

Children’s self-portraits

21/11/2010 by Cathy James 5 Comments

Fill your winter with colour!

Click here to get your Art Spark resources.

I’ll guide you through four weeks of beautiful and fun art projects that you can enjoy with your children. At home or at school, these process art projects will give you an interesting framework of activities that you can weave into your weeks, so your children are engaged, creating and enjoying themselves all through art. See more details of Art Spark here.

Following on from our faces book, how about trying to draw self-portraits?

Drawing Self- Portraits

Sit your child in front of a mirror to let them have a really good look at themselves. With young children you can name the different parts of their face and have them pull funny faces. Encourage older children to look in much more detail – at the colours in their iris and the different shades in their hair. Is their face really a circle shape? Are both sides perfectly symmetrical? Do they look like someone else in the family?

Then get creating. You can draw with just one colour, or paint, or even make a collage with wool for hair. Younger children are likely to produce very simple portraits – but, having had a good look at eyebrows and eyelashes in the mirror, they may surprise you by adding in some new details to their picture.

It’s always good to lead the way and show how adults can be crafty too – so why not have a go at your own portrait alongside them?

Fill your winter with colour!

Click here to get your Art Spark resources.

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