Painting is undoubtedly one of the most engaging and full-filled activities for tiny humans. Leave a child with a bunch of watercolors or acrylic lacquers and rest assured, they’ll stay busy for hours on end. Aside from keeping kids engrossed for many hours in a row, painting stimulates the young minds, making the enchanting activity all the more pleasing for the parents. Simply put, playing with paints is one such pastime that delights the little ones and their folks alike.

The endless benefits of painting on a child’s cognitive capacity grant it an honorable status among the grownups; whereas, creative liberty painting offers makes it a popular recreation choice for the tiny humans.

 If you want to keep your little ones engaged the right way, painting is the perfect solution for you. And with the following incredibly dynamic and creative painting ideas for kids, you will not only have the happiest kids but also get to enjoy some quality bonding time together. These paintings could also be great to be used as a gift for mom or dad. We all know sometimes is hard to find something but the gift for the impossible man could be his child’s painting he created!

So buckle up and get ready to get messy!

Sprinkling Salt to Spice Up Paintings

Salt is perhaps the most flavorsome condiment that adds taste to every dish across the board. But there is more to the salty seasoning than flavor; it can be used for a myriad of creative activities, such as painting.

Salt is a hygroscopic substance, which means it absorbs water. So naturally, when the paint is dabbed over the white flakes of salt, they absorb the color instantly, exhibiting a gorgeous shade of the lacquer hue.

Mesmerize your kids with the fascinating art of salt painting. Here’s a detailed rundown of how you can use salt to create charming art pieces.

• Choose a template to make a salt painting or have your child doodle something up.
• Trace the drawing with white glue and sprinkle a generous amount of salt over it.
• Next, brush off the access salt.
• In a clean container, pour some paint and add a dash of water. Dip the tip of a paintbrush and touch the salted picture.
• As soon as the paint comes in contact with the salt, the moisture-absorbing substance will soak up all the color, making a captivating masterpiece.

Turn Bath Times into Fun times

Does your kid dread getting soaked up under the shower stream? If so, then perhaps bath paints will jazz things up a bit. In favor of full disclosure, introducing bath paints may lead to never-ending bath time, but you know what they say? You win some; you lose some!

Bath paints are regular paints with a touch of bath wash. To make shower paints, you’ll need

• Paints, you can swap them with food color if you are worried your kid might ingest the solution.
• Kid-friendly body wash
• ½ cup of cornstarch
• 2 tbsp. of water or according to the need
• A silicon tray with compartments
• A bunch of paint brushes

To make shower paints,

• Combine a good amount of shower gel with water and cornstarch in a container. Mix the solution well until all the ingredients coalesce into a dense mixture. You can add more water if you want to play with the consistency a little. But remember, you want the shower lacquers to have a fairly runny consistency that’s easy to wash afterward.
• Once the mixture is ready, pour it into the tray and add colors into each compartment.
• Use paintbrushes to go all Van Gogh on the bathroom wall or tiled floor.

Dot Tulip Fields

Who doesn’t love a gorgeous depiction of a landscape on paper? With dot painting, you can create breathtaking tulip fields alongside your little one in less than an hour!

The supplies you’ll need to make your very own tulip fields include

• Cotton swabs
• Tempura paints or watercolors
• A drawing sheet
• A palette to spread out the colors
• Some paint brushes

How to produce vibrant tulip fields?

• Squirt a dash of brown and blue paints on the palette and paint the drawing sheet half-and-half using both hues.
• Next, dip the cotton swabs in whichever paint shades you want your flowers to be and dab the color-soaked cotton tip over the painted sheet in separate rows. That is, make one row of orange tulips, then paint the other one with red and so on. This way, you will have a colorful art piece by the end of the activity.

Yarn Painting

Time to get a bit abstract!

Yarn painting is a trendy art form popular among kids and grownups alike. It’s an exciting activity that creates irregular yet appealing shapes. To make a yarn painting, you need to gather the following supplies.

• Some yarn
• Ice-cream sticks
• Paints
• Canvas sheets

To produce a Jackson Pollock-inspired art piece, follow these steps.

• Take a strand from your yarn and dip it into whichever paint your little one wants
• Use an ice-cream stick to completely drown the thread into the paint.
• Take the colored piece of yarn and scrape it across the canvas sheet any which way.
• Repeat the same process with different colors each time to create a colorful abstract masterpiece.

If abstract art doesn’t speak to you or you think it’s a little too complicated for your tiny human’s tiny hands, you can try painting beautiful scenery with birch trees using yarn. Here’s how you can do that

First, get your hands on the following materials.

• A canvas sheet
• Yarn
• Clothespins
• Paints
• Cotton balls
• Cotton swabs
• A sharpie

Once you have all the necessary items, get on with the process.

• Wrap the yarn around the canvas sheet in such a manner that each parallel strand has a considerable distance between them.
• Next, fix a cotton ball into a clothespin and soak it in the paint of your liking.
• Use the now colored-cotton ball to haphazardly dab over the yarn-wrapped sheet, creating broad strips of different colors. In other words, use multiple colors to create rectangular patches of the paint splatters.
• Once you have covered the entire canvas with colorful blotches, use a cotton swab to add more paint to the picture by dipping the tip in any shade you want and dabbing it over the sheet whichever way you want.
• Lastly, remove the yarn and the sharpie to put tiny black dots in the spaces where the thread had been to provide texture and realism to your birch trees.

Painting with yarn may seem an elaborate task, but it’s not. Once you get into it, you will see it’s incredibly fun and tremendously riveting!

Painting Forked Monsters

No painting session with the tiny humans is complete without a bunch of scary (read: adorable) monsters running around on a drawing sheet. So naturally, you need to add some gremlins and cookie monsters to your painting routine. And the easiest way to do this is by using forks!

• Sketch up a whole lot of shapes with the prongs of a fork.

• Pour paints over a palette and let them spread out a bit.

• Next, take a fork and dip its prongs into a color.

• Use the dyed fork points to make various shapes. Just press the fork onto the sheet and let the color spread. Repeat the process in all directions to form a shape resembling a monster’s body.

• Take a sharpie to draw the limbs and facial features over your forked masterpiece!

To add more character to your painting, draw some landscape features with the sharpie or paintbrush. Try to make two images at a time to allow your kid to have their own canvas to work with while you can use yours to guide them.

Splat/Splash Painting

If you are up for a messy workstation, splat painting is the best form of recreation for you and your child.

True to its name, splat painting involves a fair amount of splattering, which means colors arching all over the place. Nonetheless, you can be sure that you are in for a ball time when attempting splash painting.

To get started, you first need to gather the following supplies.

• A palette-one that has deep paint holders
• Paints
• Water
• Kitchen sponges cut into small squares.
• A wooden spoon or spatula
• A canvas sheet

Now gear up to create a colorful mess!

• Mix equal parts of water and paint in the palette. Fill each compartment with a different shade.
• Drop the sponge cutouts into the paint-water mixture and let them soak up the color.
• After a few minutes, remove the sponges from the paint and place them on the canvas sheet at a considerable distance.
• Next, take the wooden spatula/spoon and, with a firm grip, land its flatter side over the paint-soaked sponge pieces.
• Once you are done, you’ll have an abstract art piece and, of course, quite a muddle of paint.

Although splash painting requires some serious commitment, it offers unbridled joy to parents and kids all the same! A tip we use if you are just using a brush you can use shot glasses to hold the paint. The are great because the are small and easy to clean.

Stained Glass Painting

Don’t be deterred by the name of stained glass painting; give it a shot to see for yourself how fun and straightforward it is!

Go over the following steps and draw up a magnificent art piece.

Get your hands on the following essentials to put your creative juices to work.

• A wax paper

• Paints

• Paintbrushes

• Bottle lids

To produce stained glass imagery, you need to

• Cover the wax paper with several blobs of paints. Either squirt them directly on the sheet or drop splatters using a paintbrush.

• Once the paper is completely covered in goblets of colors, pick a round cap, press its backside over the splotches, and twist it. Repeat the same process with all colors until you have an abstract looking masterpiece.

• Let the painting dry, then place it under direct light to see the effect.

If you don’t want to keep the picture basic or abstract, use a template to create a story with the stained glass painting technique. For instance, sketch a flower or ask your little one to draw it, then employ the painting methodology mentioned above.

Scrape painting

Scrape painting is another trendy painting style, thoroughly enjoyed by adults and kids alike. It requires a piece of white cardstock, paints, and drawing sheets. To make a scrape painting, you need to stick to the following steps.

• Before getting started, you need to choose whether you want an abstract piece or a defined form. If you wish to create a definite shape, use a template or draw one yourself.
• At the top of the sheet, squirt blobs of paints in a row. Doing so will give you a colorful image at the end.
• Once all the shades are on the sheet, keep the cardstock atop the paints and scrape it downwards. The different hues will follow the cardboard, creating colorful streaks.
• To tidy up the painting, define the borders with black glue or lead. And if you used a stencil, cut the piece out for a clean picture.

Let Nature Be your Painting Guru

The title of this painting style may seem poetic, but the process is messier than anything else. Using nature to produce an art piece involves dipping any foliage litter you can find into paint and tossing and turning it around on a drawing sheet.

Don’t pluck out flowers or leaves for said painting style; pickup any freshly fallen parts of trees or plants for the process. Go out and gather all twigs, shamrocks, and fallen leaves; you can find-make an activity out of this seemingly dull ritual. Get two baskets; hand one to your kid and keep the other with you. Go out in your yard and challenge each other into collecting as many natural bits as possible. Once you have amassed enough supplies, come back inside and get to work.

Keep all the following items ready to start painting; otherwise, prep them after your little scavenger hunt in the backyard.

• Paints in small containers to dip the foliage. You can also use a palette with deep paint holders if you think they will offer you enough room to soak your garden bits in color.
• Blank canvas sheets

Here’s how you will make a nature-inspired art piece

• Place the sheet flat and create as many shapes on it as you wish using the leaves and sprigs you picked up from the garden.
• Once you are done, you will have an impressionistic image, different from the conventional art styles representing proper forms and designs.
• If you don’t want your canvas to be bare in the background, paint it in one or more colors if you want, and then use the gathered sprigs to add dimensions to your piece.

Monet-Style Finger Painting

Claude Monet was a French painter who gave birth to an iconic art movement, impressionism, which focused on capturing natural forms and broke free from the picturesque, overly-stylized conventional art forms.

Now that you have an idea of who Monet was, you can truly appreciate and enjoy painting an art piece inspired by him.

To produce a Monet-Style finger painting, all you need is drawing sheets, tape, paints, and fingers! You can fetch additional supplies to make the process smoother but let’s be real; finger painting cannot be accomplished without a significant amount of untidiness!

 To work your very own Monet-magic, keep up with the following steps.

• Use the tape to mark boundaries on drawing paper; make some rough shapes, such as trees, a bridge, etc.
• Once the canvas sheet is ready, ask your little one to dip their fingertips in paint and dab them in the pre-defined spaces. You can ask them to color coordinate the entire visual or go in blind and just wing it!
• After there is an overabundance of fingertip-shaped paint splotches all over the drawing sheet in use, gently remove the tape.
• And voila! You have a masterpiece.

You can use a sharpie or black glue to add some details or ask your little artist to do it. Whether you add definitions or keep your child’s work of art as it is, the painting will elicit praise for the little one’s artistic flair from all corners!

Paint Pouring

Paint pouring is an exciting form of painting as it produces some very unique art pieces, albeit non-realistic. To try paint-pouring, all you need are multiple paints, a container, and canvas sheets.

Before we get to the technique, let’s get one thing straight paint pouring can be a little wasteful and understandably messy. Here’s how you can pour paint to fashion a work of art.

• In a low-height container, pour one paint color after the other without any order. In doing so, you will end up with a multicolored mixture.
• Once the solution is enough, upend the holder and spread all the paint over a drawing sheet in a disorderly fashion.
• Optional: use an ice-cream stick to swab the shades around. You can also sprinkle some glitter for some pizzazz or leave the painting in its original state. Either way, you will have a fascinating piece of abstract art.

The Creative Outcome

You and your child will create quite the collection of artistic masterpieces!

Whether you enjoy the arts or consider yourself too clumsy to try something creative, give the art of painting a chance for your kid. Besides, no matter what you create, nobody could call it incorrect because that’s the beauty of art; there is no right or wrong way of doing it. 

In the end, all that matters is that you have a grand old time making colorful memories with your little ones!