painting

Seven Tips for Setting up an Impromptu Garden Art Studio

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The other day we had the most amazing weather, so we set up a garden art studio… When I was in college I always loved those teachers who took their classes outside on a nice day. So why not recreate that magic with our kids? Did you know that most children don’t spend enough time [...]

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Easy String Art Experiments for Kids

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“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” – Jackson Pollack, American Painter String Art Creating string art is a fun mix of art, creative thinking, and experimentation all rolled into one open-ended package. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll know that when it comes [...]

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Explore Modern Artists: Painting with Edward Hopper

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Welcome to the first project in our newest series: Explore Modern Artists. Today we’ll take a look at one of my favorite American Artists, Edward Hopper, with a preschool-friendly painting technique. The Q-tip painting technique that we used could be applied to the work of just about any 2-D artist, so definitely take this as [...]

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Explore Modern Artists: Paint like Jasper Johns

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Today on Explore Modern Artists, we’re taking a close look at the work of American Artist Jasper Johns. For the art historians out there, Jasper Johns is technically a contemporary artist, but the piece that my four-year old and I looked at falls into the time-frame of modern art. I spent years working in modern and contemporary art [...]

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Salt Dough Ornaments: Part 2

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We painted out salt dough ornaments (recipe and instructions can be found here) and just wrapped most of them up for gifting to my daughter’s playmates. I love how they turned out, and how my 3 year old can proudly share gifts from her heart with her friends. Less you think everything comes together like [...]

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Styrofoam Prints and Baby “Painting”

Printmaking is one of my passions, so we invariably make a lot of prints in my house. I was about to recycle a styrofoam tray (I think it was from a pack of corn) when N asked if we could print with it. Why yes, we can! We’ve printed with these before (Abstract Recycled Prints) [...]

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Painting on Ice Cream

If you live in the U.S., there’s a good chance that you’re in the middle of a terrible heat wave. While I can’t make it cooler (sorry about that), I’d like to offer up this cool lesson in color mixing…and it all happens right on top of a chilly scoop of ice cream, sure to [...]

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Mini Paintings

Do you recognize these materials? I’m big on repurposing found objects into art, so when I found a plastic slide sheet from my pre-digital days I couldn’t bear to throw it out before giving it the ol’ arts and crafts makeover. If you’re not familiar with these, they’re essentially sheet protectors for slides. I showed [...]

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Outdoor Water Painting Experiments

My friend Diana sent me these amazing photos of her son (almost 2 1/2 at the time), experimenting with water painting. She offered him a couple containers of water and a paintbrush and gave him free reign to paint away. I love how he was able to take these simple materials and experiment with them [...]

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