Rainy Day Paint Treatment

Don't you just love seeing ink on paper being splattered by heavy drops of rain? We decided to do some painting on a rainy day and let the summer showers put the finishing touches on Little Bit's artwork.

Using our customary pallet of primary colors (I like for Little Bit to see how they mix into other colors) she dipped, dabbed, and swirled the paint around the paper.

Here is the picture before we let the rain do its thing.

It was a good rain; not too strong, but heavy enough to be able to see immediate results. I put the paper on a flat cookie sheet so that I wouldn't have to peel a soaking wet piece of paper off of the concrete and risk tearing it.

It took a few hours to dry, but I thought the outcome was really cool. The water changed the tone of some of the colors, and the yellow ended up much more vibrant.

I love projects like these because I get to show Little Bit how flexible art is.

This activity was inspired by the book Science Arts. What are some other treatments we could do to a painted piece of work?

The World is Her Canvas

We love to paint with Little Bit, so this week's Unplugged theme, paint, had us very excited. We decided to bring the paint outdoors and let Little Bit have free reign over our sliding glass doors!

We poured our tempera paints into a muffin tin and mixed a few additional colors for variety.

Then I explained to Little Bit that she could use her paint brushes to paint on the glass doors.

Little Bit was a little apprehensive at first and she's still learning how to use brushes as opposed to her hands, but she started getting into it after a few minutes of exploration and a little modeling by yours truly.

Of course, I should have know that the painting would soon extend to other surfaces.

Subsequently, she abandoned her brush and went back to using her fingers.

Can you tell she had a blast?

Once she had decided that she'd had enough, we made a print of her artwork on a blank piece of paper (inspired by this idea).

And clean-up was easy-peasy with the hose!

This was a fun project and one that I know she'll ask to do again. And, it was a nice "easy" material to work with for this week's Unplugged Project. Actually, I've been meaning to do this activity with Little Bit ever since the weather started warming up, so this week's theme gave us the perfect excuse! Wouldn't this be so much fun to do with a group of toddlers, like at a paint party?

To see how other participants in this week's Unplugged Project used paint, click here!