The Boy loves doing large scale art and when the snow fell earlier in the week, it was the perfect opportunity to get creative again. His recent painting sessions have shown that he is really keen to express himself artistically and so I wanted to allow him the freedom to make whatever picture he saw fit. I gave him the resources and let him get on with it.
We used:
- A2 mounting card (equally could have used a cardboard box cut up)
- various coloured paint
- a variety of sponges and paintbrushes of different sizes and textures
- silver, blue and white glitter
- cotton wool
- metallic white, foil confetti
- glue
- bubble wrap
- coloured pompoms
- talcum powder
You could also use:
- tissue paper
- clear cellophane
It's at this point that we talked about how he could use the different materials, it was the bubble wrap that really captured his attention. We popped a load of bubbles talked about what it felt like, looked like and how when it was stretched out it looked like a load of balls. At this point it was laid over the card and The Boy commented on how it looked like snow balls. He decided to paint a garden scene (is this one of the first pictures that they like to paint at this age? It's his most common scene for paintings!) and he set to painting with the grass and the sky.
The thing that often amuses me about infant painting is the way that the sky never reaches the ground, to them it's way above their heads and as they can't see the blue around them why would they paint it down there? The other thing that amazes me is how The Boy has always painted grass as blades of grass, never once has he painted a swishy mass for the ground. He normally wants to paint mud but was distracted on this occasion!
I framed it using a child-friendly picture frame from Ikea which has plastic 'glass' (although I've actually left this out because the painting is so 3D), and I've hung it in The Boy's bedroom for him to enjoy. As the seasons change, we'll do an updated picture to reflect the changes in nature.
