Thursday, May 14, 2009

In which the boys are excited about painting

Probably because if it's messy, boys like it, we've been doing some painting lately.

I am not the artistic type, so this is a challenge for me. But with my printer broken (ouch!) our study of Astronomy turned into Art. I decided we would draw the constellations with crayon and then paint over them with water colors.

Simple, right?

That's when I discovered that blue is not just my favorite color... all of our boxes of watercolor paints were out of blue. So we made our own paint.

And, just a side note, if you google "paint recipes" you'll sense my frustration. Do you realize how many paint recipes call for tempera paint? Well, gee, if I had paint would I need a recipe to make paint? Sheesh.

Food coloring I have. The recipe we went with called for equal amounts of corn starch and vinegar. (And, no, balsamic or red wine vinegar probably isn't going to give the right effect!)

This made for an interesting, rather gloppy paint that tends to flake off as it dries if you put it on too thick, but it was a fun project.

Results?

Wyatt's "Orion"


Tate's "Bootes"


Gunnar's "Orion"

1 comment:

Colleen said...

Wait a sec. You let your kids paint? And, what's more, you MADE the paint?! You're my hero. You're my boys' hero.