I think this may have been the craziest painting experience we have ever attempted but I am in love with the result!
It began last week when Immy was free painting with child friendly acrylics. She had been mixing colours and brushing and spooning the paint onto the paper hung on her easel. Then she picked up one of the paint cups and tried to pour the paint onto the paper. Unfortunately she did not have enough paint in her cup and/or it wasn’t runny enough to pour onto the page. She lost interest soon afterwards and painting time was over.
The next day I saw this post over at Not Just Cute about the work of artist Holton Rower (watch the video it is fascinating) and I thought pouring paint, why not?!? Immy and I mixed nine shades of child friendly acrylic which I diluted slightly with water (if we did this experience again I would make the paint even thinner to encourage the pouring and running effect).
We set up our painting station using Immy’s easel as a base. I covered everything with a disposable plastic tablecloth and used masking tape loops to hang a large canvas (we were reusing an old painting of mine which is I covered with a quick top coat which is why you can still see some of the image underneath).
Immy climbed up onto her stepstool and the ‘painting’ began. It probably would have helped if Immy was an inch or two higher but she was fascinated by the paint running down the canvas, especially as the paints ran at different speeds.
She regularly jumped down to have a look from a different perspective and we moved the stool around so that she could work from different angles, and she was fascinated with the process and effect of the paint on the canvas.
Young children’s art is most definitely about the process of experimenting and exploring and this experience certainly was an experiment! But you know, I love the final product as well…
Would you be brave enough to try dripping with paint???
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