I love paint, stencils, colored pencils, markers, glue, papers, crayons……..

Have you ever noticed that children love those things too?

When my grandson was born I wanted to make sure he had opportunity to create, to play with art supplies, and develop a love for art.  Over the years we have graduated from finger paint to colored pencils, and then paint and paintbrushes.
Recently when my grandson was visiting I asked him if he wanted to create something with one of my canvases.  This was the first time I offered to let him use one of my “real” canvases.  He was so excited as he chose a 12 x 12″ canvas.  According to him this was going to be his first “real” piece of art.  According to me, everything he has ever created is a piece of art!

Before we started the painting we looked on the internet for some coloring pages with snowmen.  Today, he wanted to make a snowman.  After printing off the snowman he was ready to tackle the canvas.   Starting with a blank canvas can be rather intimidating so I told him to chose 2 colors of acrylic paint.  We squeezed some of each color on the palette then I encouraged him to start painting the canvas.  (By the way, my grandson is 6 years old.)  Here’s what he ended up with.

It was simple and fun for both of us.   While the canvas was drying he began coloring his snowman with colored pencils.

We decided to cut the “snow” part of the snowman from an old dictionary page.  We cut out the parts of the coloring page that we wanted to use and then used them as guides for drawing the pieces of the snow onto the dictionary page.

Now he was ready to add the snowman pieces to the canvas.  First he painted Mod Podge onto the canvas approximately where he wanted the snowman.

As he added the snowman pieces he made sure that everything was completely covered with Mod Podge.

For the snow along the bottom of the canvas he tore  pieces of tissue paper and covered it completely with Mod Podge.   Notice how the wrinkled tissue paper makes great texture!

Another view of the Mod Podge covered snowman and tissue paper snow.  He added many layers of the tissue paper along the bottom.  I like to save tissue paper from gift bags for projects just like this.  It’s a great way to recycle paper.

Together we dried the piece with a heat gun.  Hint:  Make sure they keep the gun moving over the canvas.  If they leave it in one place the paint will bubble up.

Then I gave him a Pilot Permaball pen to trace or sketch the details on the snowman.  Use short sketchy type lines for tracing around the snowman and adding details.

The image below show some of the detail he added.  He even painted the carrot nose.  As you can see by this close up we added polka dot and circle stamps with white acrylic paint to look like snow falling.  He even added some stamps around the edge of the canvas.

The image below shows you some of the detail.  Faber-Castell makes some wonderful markers called PITT artist pen big brush.  I love to use them for shading.  You can see how he shaded the arm on the right side and also underneath the vest.  The reason I love the Faber-Castell big brush pen is because you can wet a paintbrush and move the color around.

Here is his finished project, ready to hang up!  He was pretty proud of his art piece.  I loved spending the time with him, letting his creativity fly.  But the very best part was when he said to me, “Grandma, I AM a real artist!”

(Yes indeed, sweetie, you certainly are!)

If you want to create an art project like this with a child here are the suggested supplies:

12×12″ canvas or one of your choosing

coloring page (keep the coloring page something simple that is easy to cut out)

acrylic paint and paint brushes

colored pencils

Mod Podge

Assorted stamps

Faber Castell PITT artist pen big brush  (optional)

Tissue Paper

Pilot Permaball pen   (optional)

dictionary pages   (optional)