Painting activities that kids can explore on their own are priceless. The simple addition of white crayons to a basic watercolor set-up allows for delightful explorations without the need for adult oversight. Kids never fail to be amazed when their white-on-white drawing and writing shows up like a secret message as the colorful watercolor paints go over.
Supply your painting center with
- good quality watercolor sets with bright easy-to-use colors
- heavy white paper
- soft, round paintbrushes, big enough to hold a good amount of wet watercolor paint and spread it smoothly over the paper
- plastic cups for rinse water
About the only instruction kids will need is “press hard with the crayon, and draw lots of different things..the more the merrier.” Seeing white drawings on white paper is a challenge. Encourage kids to look at their paper from the side so the shiny wax crayon lines stand out. Emphasize the unexpected random beauty of this activity rather than careful, neat drawings.
A few magical idea prompts:
- Simply filling a paper with scribbled loops and loops and loops is a fun way to start.
- Night sky pictures with black and midnight blue paint over white crayon stars, moon and moonbeams.
- Outer space drawings…black, dark blues and purples over drawings of spaceships and rockets zooming across the paper.
- Jellyfish drawings in blue and green swirly water. Bubbles too. Add light pastel colored crayons – pink, gold, yellow, light green – for jellyfish colors. Some photos of real jellyfish are great inspiration for drawing these amazing creatures.
- Draw overlapping geometric shapes, such as a paper filled with white circles of different sizes. Drop different colors of paint onto the design, allowing colors to mix together on top of the white rings.
- Trace your hand with white crayon, the fill the hand area with many different stripes, dots and scribbles. Paint over with your favorite colors.