Kids Art: Watercolor and Cling Wrap

Continuing the theme of art projects we did recently, here is another.

I was browsing for simple activities with stunning results that can be easily done at home during the Winter Holidays and came across this. I had to try it with Ana.

Items Used: Watercolor paper, Acrylic paper, diluted tempera paints or watercolors, large paint brush, and plastic cling wrap.

1. Simply apply blobs of color on heavy-weight paper.
2. Place a Cling Wrap sheet on top while still wet, and crinkle it to form patterns.
3. Allow to dry.
4. Remove the cling wrap.
5. Voilà!

We left it by the heating vent, of course, to speed up drying. And proudly showed it to Appa when he got home!

Heavy-weight paper works best, and, the nature and quality of the paper makes a difference, as we would expect. Acrylic paper had a more smooth finish with fractal-like formations.



Whereas, Watercolor paper had a coarse textured look with an interesting cracked crystalline pattern.



Usually, I talk about interesting things we could try with materials at home to gauge Ana's interest on any particular day.

Ana has been exploring a lot of open-ended art activities since babyhood and has shown signs of being more than ready to do something definite, with a purpose, but which is also new with room to explore. Knowing her materials and having some expectations helps her take the first step in a new direction.

When she expresses readiness to try out, I assemble the materials, describing them, repeating the names of materials that are new to her.

And, as usual, she wasn't satisfied with making just one, so she created a few, playing with colors and textures, some of which weren't as stunning as the others as we found out. But then, 'stunning' is quite subjective anyway :)