My two-year-old daughter is somewhat of a reluctant artist. Elise loves the idea of painting; sometimes I give her a dry, clean paintbrush and she walks around “painting” everything.
But when it comes to the real thing, she only is interested for a couple of minutes. She doesn’t like anything wet or messy on her hands, so that’s somewhat limiting. Because of this, we did this project in four very short sessions.
One of the things I dislike about kid’s art is that it’s typically made with inferior materials or strictly primary colors. As Elise is starting to do projects, I’m trying to let her use the same materials I use. This might change as she gets older if she wants to make a bazillion things, but for now it’s manageable.
I found two 5″ x 7″ canvas boards I had laying around. They were already painted black from some unfinished project of mine from years ago. I structured the project and chose the colors, but all of the brushstrokes were hers.
We layered one color at a time and waited for each layer to dry before adding another. This avoided any “muddy” paint (another typical drawback of kid art). This process also coordinated nicely with a two-year-old’s patience. We did four layers in all (white, pink, a subtly lighter pink and an orangey yellow). When everything was dry, I sprayed the canvasses with a clear sealer to give it that “finished” look.
The backs of the canvas boards were not so pretty and I didn’t want to frame the paintings, so I used Mod Podge to glue some scrapbook paper onto the backs. Then I added a small label with Elise’s name and age. Now that I think about it, I should have done something quirky in the format of a museum plate, but too late.
After the first couple of layers, I thought the paintings would turn out looking very kiddish, but they ended up looking a bit sophisticated! I’m kind of in love with them, but they were Mother’s Day gifts for Elise’s grandmas. We will have to collaborate on another piece of artwork just for us very soon.
