Easy Silhouette Painting for Children

For the end of the year at ILMA Education and Play, I usually have a party and a painting activity. Last year the children painted what I called 'Silhouette Painting'. 

This idea came about when I noticed that every time the children painted they would end up with a big splotch of brown mess. What happens (without fail I might say) is that the children would mix all the colours together and swirl this round and round  and dab it all over their paper. You all know what happens when all the colours are mixed - you get brown, usually a muddy brown too!

To avoid ending up with a brown painting, I first put one colour at a time on the palette and the children would paint with this colour. Before the children could cover the whole canvas with the yellow that they were using, I poured another colour onto their palette. Of course they all switched colour immediately without being told to do so. 

I kept adding more paint colours like this and told them to make sure they cover the whole canvas without leaving any white spots and without over painting previous areas too much. What they ended up with was a colourful background.

The canvas was nice and bright but I didn't want the children to just bring home a brightly painted canvas. There needed to be a picture on it and the only colour that would stand out from the background was black. 

So next up, once the background was dried, I gave the children black paint and said that they could paint one picture that had to fill up most of the canvas. As you can see, some chose a house, flower, fish, heart or car - easy basic shapes so they wouldn't ended up with a big blob of black by trying to paint too many things.

The final results were very striking. Quite lovely!

Instructions:
1. Use different coloured paints to paint the background onto canvas. Let dry.
2. Use black paint to paint a simple picture.
3. Use the opposite end of the brush to etch in the details - a bit like etch art.
4. Voila!