Out of all the painting that I did as a child, I remember magic painting the best. It was my favourite activity to do. It was simple yet exciting!
Magic paint, for those who don’t know/don’t remember, is where you paint with watercolours to reveal a secret picture! Think of those paint-with-water colouring books you can buy. Same idea, just way cheaper, customizable and super fast and easy to create.
What you need:
– watercolours & brush
– white paper
– a white crayon
– water to dip your brush into
First…draw whatever you want to magically appear using the white crayon. Don’t be afraid to double, triple, or quadruple up on your strokes. Bold is better. This is what mine looked like:
See that? Not really, right? Good. It’s white on white. What did you expect to see?
Next…set up your waterpaints, brush and water for your little one. They can paint with whatever colours they want. The paint resists the crayon, so whatever you drew on with the crayon will appear when they paint the page!
Tada! Magic! And while Little Bear’s creation is more muted, an older child would be able to add a bit more depth of colour. Also, fewer colours make for fewer distractions for this crayon resist style painting. But if you’re two, you’re allowed to use every single colour in the tray.
I chose to write a “1” to reinforce some of the numbers we were working on. I also wrote out “one” but Little Bear decided to paint with water on that part so it didn’t show up very well!
Later when we were reading Kathryn Otoshi’s one, we talked about how the books used watercolours and how some of the colours were brighter or bolder. Little Bear got very excited knowing that he had used watercolours like the pictures in the book!
Overall, this was a very fun activity for both of us and required a great deal more patience and precision than Little Bear is used to when painting (he’s a finger painter at heart!).
What was your favourite type of art to do as a child?
