Paint Paper and Collage Making

An Easter Art Activity Created by Acting Gallery Educator, Danielle Castle. This art activity can be adapted for all ages of children. Read below for tips and tricks. Remember, have fun!

Objectives:

• Exercise and demonstrate use and mastery of the elements of design.

• Use materials, tools and processes from a variety paints, creating textures, using glue, scissors and creating a collage.

• Study of lines, strokes, colors, shades, tones, textures, etc. while organizing two dimensional space with two dimensional and three dimensional shapes and forms.

Supplies:

• Paper - Construction, card-stock, drawing paper, cardboard, newspaper. You can use any types of paper to paint on.

• Paper - a separate paper to use for the background. I used a large piece so we could work big! I would also suggest using a black piece of paper to make the collage pop.

• Water - for paint brushes

• Acrylic or Tempera Paints

• Brushes - Of various sizes

• Tools for creating texture - plastic fork, sponges, q-tips, blocks, toilet paper roll, etc

• Marker - for drawing on the bunny face

• Optional: Templates (Egg, basket, bunny)

Directions:

Set up your first piece of paper with your paint and painting tools. Choose what colors you want to use to make eggs with, a basket for the eggs and what colors you would like your bunny to be. For younger groups of children you can create color stations so all the paints do not get mixed up.

While creating the paint paper try to stick to like colors for each paper, once the first layer dries use a darker or lighter hue. This will create papers that are easier to collage with after painting.

During this first step you can show your child different types of brush strokes, what swirling the brush around does versus creating long strokes.

They can also paint shapes to create patterns on the paper. There really is no wrong way to do this lesson, it’s all about just letting loose and painting up a storm!

Fill the paper up as much as possible so you have plenty of material to work with later.

While the paint is wet try creating some texture by using the plastic fork to create lines in the paint.

Once a layer of paint is dry you can make prints on the paper. Dip the paper roll in the paint and make prints on the page. You can also use sponges cut out in shapes, fake flowers and many other things to make prints with. Allow for layers to dry. While waiting, move to another station and create a new paint paper with different colors.

Once you have created paint paper in various colors, allow the pages to dry. We used brown for our basket and painted other colors such are blue, pink and red for eggs, blue and yellow for our bunny.

My four year old son had so much fun painting away. This an exercise of technique and the painted papers do not have to be anything in particular when they are done.

Once you have created paint paper in various colors, allow the pages to dry. We used brown for our basket and painted other colors such are blue, pink and red for eggs, blue and yellow for our bunny.

When the paint has dried you can now cut the paper! Depending on the age of the child you can do a few different things for this process. I have a four year old, who is just learning how to use scissors, so I did the majority of the cutting for the picture. I had my toddler choose colors for everything and while I cut I let him use his child safety scissors to practice his cutting skills.

With older kids you can make templates for the eggs, basket and a bunny. Have the child trace then cut out the shapes or, even better, you can have the child free hand cut their shapes out and get really creative! It all depends on age and skill level. We made a lot of paint paper so we decided to create a bunny for our composition. Keep in mind you will need: A basket, eggs and you can even add a cute bunny made from your children’s hand-prints.

We created a brown paper for our basket. I made this basket huge because I knew it would fit on our background paper, which also allows us to make many large eggs to go in the basket. I used a wide U shape for the basket.

Use the size of your basket to gauge the size of your eggs, if you are making templates for your children. You will know how big everything will need to be to fit together.

Bunny Hand-print Instructions:

1. Trace hands on paint paper and cut out. I traced the hand on the backside of the paper so no lines would show on the painted side. Use the same colored piece of papers to cut out the bunny head and body.

2. Take the bunny’s inner ear and glue it onto the base of your child’s hand-print. Repeat for both ears.Once you’ve completed the ears, glue them to the back of the bunny’s head with the fingers pointed up.

3. Use a sharpie to draw on the nose and mouth, or any other details they wish to add.

It is now time to collage the whole picture! (We decided to use our green paper to make grass.)

Once you have an idea of where things will be place you can start gluing things together. Be sure to start gluing with back layers first and front layers last.

This is the completed result with our paint paper! You can use paint paper to collage many things. The options are limitless.

If you did this activity be sure to share it to our Facebook page or send it in an email to the educator at educator@mannartgallery.ca. Thank you for reading and be sure to share this activity.