Category Archives: color

Painted Collages (TinkerLab Magazine Challenge)

Materials: Illustration board, old magazines, glue or paste, scissors (of course!), acrylic paint–the kind in tubes, not the liquid kind.

Once again, Rachelle at TinkerLab invited us to participate in a materials challenge, this time using magazines. So I brought it up with the kids, who are now 10, 7 1/2, and 3. Did they want to do something? Sure! So we brainstormed. Although there is a lot of making going on in our house, especially as Christmas approaches, my kids didn’t look at the magazines as raw material for some thing. I suspect this is because when we get together to do art projects, we are usually focusing on exploring and experimenting. It’s very much about the process.

So although my kids have used paper to make all sorts of items, from super hero rings to dice for homemade games (and since I always have to think really hard about making a cube out of something flat, this impresses me every time!), they viewed the magazine as canvas. The ideas they finally settled on, which we combined, were cutting and pasting the magazine, and painting right on the page.

We started, of course, by selecting and cutting. G’s cutting skills have really taken off lately, because she’s been happily working at cutting paper just about every day (her idea). As a result, she didn’t need my help at all while everyone was cutting. After gluing down the images and letting them dry, we moved onto painting.

Note the mug of coffee to the right; mama runs on caffeine!

V decided he wanted to paint his board first and then paste his images down, so he’s using tempera here.

The rest of us are using acrylic after having glued down the images and then brushing a layer of glue over the image, as well. We used Mod Podge paper with mixed results; I was hoping to get a good surface for applying paint, but I don’t know if we wouldn’t have been better off just using a glue stick.

N and I enjoyed mixing the acrylics (the basic set of primaries with black and white) to get new colors, and we used a variety of brush sizes. He’s getting detailed in that photo.

G decided to paste down one full magazine page, with one tiny image glued down on top of it. Then she began painting.

Eventually she covered the entire image. Then she lifted some off using a cotton swab.

Here are N and G’s finished pieces (whoops, I photographed G’s upside down):

And here is V’s, although the images and text aren’t pasted down yet. He also has plans to paint the other side and glue down even more images. I guess I should have left one piece of illustration board full size!

He really likes Legos!

Thanks again, Rachelle, for inviting us to play along. Here is the full list of participating bloggers; click on the links for some more projects featuring magazines!

Child Central Station , Teach Mama, The Imagination Tree,Childhood101, Teach Preschool, hands on as we grow, Artful Parent, Paint Cut Paste, A Mom With A Lesson Plan, Toddler Approved, Kiwi Crate, Art 4 Little Hands, Red Ted Art, The Chocolate Muffin Tree, Imagination Soup,Michelles Charm World, Messy Preschoolers, Tinker Lab, Mommy Labs, Putti Prapancha, Sun Hats and Wellie Boots

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Maps, Drawn + Painted

Marble Painting, Traditional and Magnetic

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Materials: Tempera paint, magnetic marbles, magnet wands, foil cake or pie pans (I used cake because the edges are slightly taller), paper cut to fit the pan, small cups and spoons for the paint

After our magnetic painting activity at the science store, G and I bought some magnetic marbles to take home so the boys could experiment too. Marble painting isn’t a new idea, but amazingly we hadn’t tried it yet. I can tell you that the big kids enjoy it as much as the younger kids.

We decided to use primary colors, so I set out three small cups–each with one color of paint, three magnetic marbles, and a spoon. We started with white paper and added paint-covered marbles.

N wanted to try his hand at controlling the marble with the wand from below. He experimented to see how far the wand could be from the pan and yet still cause the marble to move.

V mostly rolled.

N really got into the color mixing, working a bit on creating green.

That’s two marbles, zipping right along. Because they’re magnetic, they stick to each other, too. What would happen with three, he wondered?

They stuck in a line, so you could only roll them in two directions. Interesting!

G kept working on one sheet of paper, trying to cover the entire sheet with paint. As a result, she began getting a really interesting marbled effect when the marble rolled over thicker areas of paint.

On his second sheet, V tried to quite deliberately control the marble.

At the end, G just couldn’t resist touching all that paint.

And so she ended by making hand prints.

We did this on a day when the boys were home sick from school. Given some options, they both really wanted to experiment with the marble painting. The magnetic wands add another element of experimentation–there to use, or not. Before I cleaned everything up, I got a chance to play too. Fun!

(This project uses a chokable item–the marbles–so use your own judgment, yes?)

Painting With Wool

Simple Chromotography and Magnet Painting

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A local science-oriented toy store has a “kinderscience” program once per week for kids ages 2-5. I’ve taken G a few times. It’s a good way to get out of the house and, since it’s within walking distance of the car dealership, it was an excellent place to pass the time with a three-year-old last week while the car was being serviced. The activities in this session were art-via-science, so I decided to share them here. In general, I’d prefer it if the instructor spent less time talking (there is a lot of “this is what you’re going to do and this is what is going to happen”) and more time just setting out the activity and letting the kids explore. But of course, as soon as the materials were available, that is exactly what I encouraged G to do.

The first activity involved coffee filters–such a favorite! The kids were to color on the filters with markers, then drop water onto it with a dropper. G was excited to see the droppers, as we’d just used them the day before for an activity at home and she already knew how to use them herself. Because the trays were red, it was a little hard for her to tell where her color was going.

The instructor ripped some filters so they lay flat in a butterfly shape, too. On this one, she decided to see what would happen if you drew some more on the wet filter. I think we’ll try this activity again at home on the white table, to eliminate the background color confusion.

The second activity was a version of marble painting, but instead of rolling the marbles around in the pie tin, the kids were to use a magnet wand, from the bottom, to drag painty magnetic marbles over the paper.

After a bit of this, G decided to simply roll the marbles around the old-fashioned way, as it was easier.

We already have three of the magnet wands–we used them over the summer to collect iron filings from beach sand (which is super fun and, quite frankly, very cool to do)–so I bought a small bag of magnetic marbles so my older kids (who were in school) can try this as well.

All in all, much better than sitting in the car dealership’s waiting room for an hour!

After the Color Mixing

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Last week I posted about a color-mixing activity G, age 3, did. When she was done mixing the colors and exploring the corn starch, she began painting with the leftover colored water. “I’m painting a cave,” she said as she began. After she’d applied all three colors, she asked for some salt.

I poured some into that cup for her, and she sprinkled it on with her hands. And then she asked for more, and more, until she had piles of salt on her paper. Then she decided to see what would happen when she painted on top of the salt.

Kind of interesting, no? More salt and more paint…

“Mud in the cave!” she exclaimed.

Experimenting…always a good thing!

Preschool Color-Mixing Activity

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{You may also be interested in this color-mixing activity using tempera paint in squeeze bottles.}

(Source: The “cornstarch and water” activity in Ann Pelo’s The Language of Art: Inquiry-Based Studio Practices in Early Childhood Settings.)

Now that G is three, we suddenly have a preschool-aged child in the house instead of a toddler. This is exciting, as different activities are opening up for us. At our latest parent-child art class, N and I did some color mixing. (If you’re interested, you can read more about that class–although not the color-mixing–in my post on my other blog.) G asked to do some color mixing of her own, so I set up the activity using the one in Ann Pelo’s book as a guide.

Materials: Red, blue, and yellow colored water (I used very watered-down liquid watercolors; you could also use food coloring in water); a dropper for each color; white mixing tray (white shows the colors better); cornstarch

First, I showed G how to use the droppers–squeeze the end, put it in the color, let go of the end, and then squeeze out the color where you want it.

She mixed all three colors in the first cup, first making purple and then, “Brown!” Then she mixed the primaries individually, eventually creating purple, orange, and green.

Mixing colors is really magical, isn’t it? G has done it before, with paint on paper; this was just a different way of seeing it. As each color was created, she delightedly named it. When she’d mixed some colors, she said she was ready for the cornstarch.

According to the book, the cornstarch will separate the colors out again as the individual colors adhere to separate grains (bits? granules?) of the cornstarch. Erm, not so much, at least not for us. We mixed it up, but still, the purple cornstarch looked purple; the green, green; and so on. G decided to mix colors on top of the cornstarch and see what happened then.

Then it became obvious to me that she needed a bigger mixing area, so I offered a bowl.

Ah, much better. So much more space! I scraped the cornstarch she’d already colored into it, and more colors were added. Then more water, then more colors…

Then more cornstarch, and more water, until she ran out of room.

She had a fine time with her concoction-making, watching the colors mix and periodically dipping a hand into the very watery ooblek she’d created. When she was done (when the foil container was full), she used the remaining colored water for some painting…but that’s another post.

*Note: Don’t rinse your cornstarch down the drain, in case it decides to firm up on you down there. Throw it in the trash instead.

Autumn Window Leaves

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(Inspired partly by the Artful Parent’s Autumn Leaves Stained Glass and partly by Fall Leaves and Mod Podge at Gingerbread Snowflakes, via the Crafty Crow; this is a sort of hybrid.)

Materials: Colorful autumn leaves, Mod Podge, brush, double-sided tape

This isn’t art and it isn’t craft either, really. It’s more like kid-friendly DIY home decor. But I include it because G (age just-3) helped with it all and our windows look really pretty and seasonal now. I wasn’t quite up to applying contact paper to our windows (as in the Artful Parent link above), but that’s due to my own struggles with any piece of contact paper larger than my hand. So I thought we’d just skip the middle step and tape the leaves right to the windows.

I don’t have photos of the process because it’s so easy I didn’t think to take any! These leaves were pressed for varying amounts of time. The leaves we only pressed overnight kept the most color but weren’t flat. The ones we pressed for longer seemed to lose a lot of color, although they became more vibrant once sunlight was shining through them.

After they were pressed, G and I brushed one side of each leaf with Mod Podge. When that dried, I put a coat of Mod Podge on the other side of the leaf (just me, because G was in bed). Then I put pieces of double-sided tape on the window and we pressed the leaves onto the tape.

There are so many great art activities out there using leaves, but my kids balk at anything that involves covering up the inherent beauty of the leaf. A walk from the car to the door invariably results in every kid handing me at least one leaf and asking, “Can we press this?” I like that they’re looking so closely at the leaves and finding so much gorgeousness in them. It’s good to be able to display all these small pieces of nature-made artwork.

Do you have some great ideas to share using colorful autumn leaves?

If You Build It, They Will Come

Experimenting With Bleeding Tissue Paper

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Materials: Bleeding tissue paper (we used Spectra), water color paper, spray bottle

I’ve been wanting to play with this product for a while now, and during our last trip to the Eric Carle Museum, I saw some in their bookstore (which is an absolutely fabulous place) and picked some up. And then it sat in the studio for a while as we squeezed out every last drop of summer, outside! The other day, G and I decided to experiment with the bleeding tissue paper.

I cut out some squares and spread them on the table, and then gave G half a sheet of 12×18 water color paper. She began by arranging some squares of tissue on her paper. Before she began spraying, I cleared the leftover tissue out of the area.

Then she began to spray.

And spray. The girl loves to use a spray bottle!

The colors began to run off the paper and mix in the puddles. Isn’t that pretty? As she sprayed, G commented on the colors she saw and how they were mixing. (As you can see from these pictures, if you don’t have an anything-goes art table, you probably want to do this in a shallow plastic tub or something similar, to protect your table.)

There was so much water on the paper, G decided to add some dry tissue on top of the puddles to see what would happen. Then she asked for a big sheet of paper to lay on top. I thought she wanted a big piece of tissue, so I asked what color, but she said no, she wanted the other piece of white paper–the other half of the water color paper I’d cut in half.

Carefully, we laid it on top of the wet paper and tissue.

She wanted to make a print–and I love that she both knows the process of making a print and recognizes a good opportunity to give it a try!

From the start, G had said she wanted to color on the paper once it was dry. So the next day, after it had dried and the tissue paper shook off, that’s what she did.

Our colors came out very muted. (I experimented too, on another small sheet of paper.) I’m not sure if this is because we overlapped so many colors and they all bled together, or because we used a spray bottle instead of a paintbrush, which I imagine would keep the water more in one place, or perhaps a combination. I plan to experiment with this paper some more, both with G and with the older kids. We certainly have enough of it to try all sorts of methods.

Have you used bleeding tissue paper? What did you find worked best?

amy hood arts

Category Archives: color

Painted Collages (TinkerLab Magazine Challenge)

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Maps, Drawn + Painted

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Marble Painting, Traditional and Magnetic

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Painting With Wool

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Simple Chromotography and Magnet Painting

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After the Color Mixing

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Preschool Color-Mixing Activity

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Autumn Window Leaves

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If You Build It, They Will Come

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Experimenting With Bleeding Tissue Paper

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