We came up with five watercolor crafts for kids to explore various mediums and what happens when you combine them. We tried watercolor resist art with glue and crayons, water color and salt art where the salt absorbed the paint, watercolor string art and lastly watercolor newspaper art. Each technique had very different end results and were a blast to create!
Watercolor and glue was probably our favorite technique to try. The glue bottle acts as your drawing tool; you squeeze the white glue onto the white canvas and make a picture; the canvas is sturdy enough to hold the glue. It is pretty cool to see how the dried glue “resist” the watercolor paint and brings the drawing to life!
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To be totally honest, I have never tried salt and watercolor together. It actually is super cool and my kids loved seeing how the salt absorbs the watercolor! We used watercolor paper for this technique, just go light on the glue. You can use a watercolor paint brush, but we found this technique worked best with liquid watercolor and our plastic eyedroppers.
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There are two ways you can explore watercolor crayon art. Kids can create a magic picture with white crayons on watercolor paper and watch their design appear when watercolor is painted over their drawing. The second is to draw a picture using regular crayons. The wax in the crayon resists the watercolor paint. Both methods are super cool and create awesome pictures!
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We loved using newspaper! Have your kids cut out shapes, circles for flowers, rectangles to make bookmarks, etc. Use watercolor paint over the newspaper print. I preferred using newspaper with words rather than photos.
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Doesn’t this kid painting look like a modern piece of art you could buy at a home decor store? I just love how the string creates a beautiful and unique geometric pattern. The watercolors are vibrant and absorb really well onto canvas. Watercolor string art is an easy watercolor technique to use with kids of all ages. I can totally see this as a fun art and math lesson!
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