Tips for Painting with Children

The first tip for painting with children is the MOST important one.  It will allow you–the adult in charge–to be carefree, happy, and relaxed to thoroughly enjoy the experience with the little ones.

Find a place where it is okay to get messy.  Otherwise you will be stressed about the paint getting on the furniture or floors or on the beautiful new wallpaper you just had installed.  Believe me, that kind of limitation will kill the experience.

Sling paint in the basement, outdoor patio, garage–just anyplace where a little drip won’t hurt.

Now that you’ve found the place to paint,

everyone–including the adult–puts on paint clothes.  Now everyone is ready to get messy and you won’t freak when paint smeared hands tug at your shirt.

I like to have my children paint on canvas occasionally.  They think it is special, and it gives them the chance to experiment with opacity and blending that they don’t get to do with watercolors on paper.  I sometimes buy them the canvases with the deep, wrapped profiles–some manufacturers call these “gallery wrapped.”  (Like the one my daughter is working on in the above photo.)  These type of canvases do not need frames and are ready to hang as soon as the paint is dry.  Canvas boards are less expensive and are fun for playing around on–and they can be framed when a masterpiece is created.

Now it’s time to gather the paint.

Children need paint with lower viscosity so their brushstrokes flow freely.  Craft paints are very fluid and also are cheap so you can have lots of colors without the mixing, which can be tedious for kids.  House paint also works well for large areas and dripping.  I rarely bring out my acrylic art paints for my kids because they are very thick and much more expensive.

Give the child lots of colors to choose from.  Do not choose paint for the child that only matches the rug or the sofa or the painting will disappear into the room.  I generally only give them access to brights since children inevitably blend them all together to make “mud” anyways.

With the right place, clothes, and materials–we’re ready to paint!

Before you invite the child to paint, completely cover the canvas in any color but white.  Sometimes kids forget to cover all the areas of a canvas when they are painting; and white canvas peeking through looks like amateur art, but layered art looks infinitely more interesting.  It doesn’t matter what color the base painting is done in since only bits of it will show through the finished product.