161) Blown Watercolor Painting

I love Spring time and much to my surprise the Spring temperatures have been pretty lovely around here for the last few weeks. It took a while to warm up this Spring, which here in Baltimore usually means it goes right to summer. However, this year, the temperatures in the mid 70's have meant lots and lots of playing outside around here. We have also taken to doing lots of art making outside lately, which always makes the clean-up a bit easier so I won't complain. Last week did a type of painting I totally remember doing as a kid and loving. 

I put out some large watercolor paper, some liquid watercolor paints (although you could even use food coloring and water too), some pipettes (you could also use a brush or squirt bottle) and some plastic drinking straws. The girls then used the pipettes to suck out some of the paint and squirted it right onto the paper. The watercolor made lovely puddles of paint on the paper. They then took a straw, or in the Bee's case 3 straws, and blew through the straw right into the puddle of paint. The air through the straw caused the paint to spread and splatter, creating beautiful patterns and shapes beyond their control. 

As always I loved how differently the Bee and Bean approached the project. The Bean went for a less is more approach. She only used a few colors, put all her paint into one large puddle on her paper, blew the paint around a little and then moved on to playing in the yard. The Bee took a more is more approach, using three straws, three pipettes to cover almost every inch of her large paper in paint. She spent a very long time working on her painting and even came back to it a little later. Once they were all done we let painting dry outside, within a few hours they were all dry and ready to go.