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Kids Art: Drip Painting Continued

As Immy enjoyed our first drip painting experience so much I have been thinking about other ways to experiment with thin paint. I decided it might be fun to try dripping food colouring (or liquid watercolour if you have it) with a turkey baster to see what sorts of marks it would leave on the painted surface. For a first go, I thought it might also be a good idea to drip the ‘paint’ onto fabric as it is obviously more absorbent than paper, recycling a terry toweling burp cloth (I did put down a heap of newspaper as well to help soak up any excess).

As the baster was very large, it was difficult to control how much paint came out with each squeeze so this is definitely more of a process art experience, lending itself to lots of experimentation 🙂  Amazingly, Immy created a whole story around her artwork – about a beach and the sea and boogie boards and what happens on the beach when it rains.

She explored mixing the colours together and also enjoyed flooding areas with lots of the liquid – watching the colour slowly spread out across the fabric (good thing I had put that newspaper down!).

When we try this again, I would like to drip onto a vertical surface like we did the first time as I know Immy was really interested in watching the paint run down the surface. I would also like to try this drippy squeeze bottle painting that I saw over at Tinkerlab, I am sure that I have some recycled sauce squeeze bottles hidden away somewhere!

Have you tried drip painting with your children?

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Christie Burnett is an early childhood teacher, presenter, writer and the editor of Childhood 101. More importantly, she is a Mum who believes wholeheartedly in the value of children learning through play, the importance of quality early education, and the togetherness of family.

Read more of Christie's adventures at https://childhood101.com.

Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

  1. Cassie says

    June 30, 2011 at 9:14 AM

    My turkey basters are glass so i won't be using those! But I was just at target this afternoon in the $1 spot they have mustard and ketchup squeeze bottles in a pack that might work. I picked them for another project (side walk painting). Other ideas are dish soap bottles, hair dye bottles, etc. Can't wait to try this for our "summer school" art week. Thanks!

  2. Tammi says

    June 30, 2011 at 7:19 PM

    What a fantastic blog you have :) I love this idea of drip painting, my children love art so this is right up their alley. Am off to see what other delights you have here. x

  3. Juliet says

    June 30, 2011 at 8:45 PM

    This was an absolute favourite with the preschoolers I used to teach!! We were able to source plastic eye droppers and found the best material to paint onto was blotting paper (though really hard to find!). We also used to use some sort of fabric wipe we found in some suppliers catalogue. We extended this experience as the children developed their interest in it by: a) getting them to draw with black permanent marker and then fill their picture in. b) created a new experience called 'fold, dip and dye', whereby the children were encouraged to fold their fabric piece over and over again and then dip the various sides/corners into different coloured edicol-water colour. The result was like a tie-dyed t-shirt. Just thinking about it, I think I have seen eye droppers at chemists :)

  4. Scott says

    June 30, 2011 at 10:31 PM

    Some beautiful painting. What fun! We've used eyedroppers for a small-scale version of this - but this looks like great fun.

  6. Pixie says

    July 12, 2011 at 8:16 PM

    As an extra experiment, it can be really intriguing to look at the chromatography of the colours you're using. For absolute best results, see what you can do with black Quink ink, wetting the page first by dipping it in a tray of water then brushing the ink onto the page (cotton buds/q-tips are another option for a painting utensil). As the ink dries is separates, and you see the black become blue around the edges, then when the page is completely dry you flip it over and there's a vibrant orange colour separated out.

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