We first had a go at blow painting a long time ago, when my girls were still small, my big boy just a baby, and the baby not even born yet!
When my kids were little, art was all about the process and not so much about the product, and blow painting was all about learning to blow not suck, and moving the paint around on the paper.
Now that they are getting older, they all love using art to represent ideas and create things. So adding one extra item to this blow painting activity, and suggesting that the blown paint looked like crazy hair, was all the prompt my kids needed to make crazy blow painting monsters!
If you’d like to make some crazy monster blow painting you’ll need the following:
- Watered down paint, food colouring or liquid water colours
- A container for each colour of paint
- A spoon for each colour of paint
- Large sheets of paper
- Straws – one for each child
- Permanent markers
If you are using regular washable paint you’ll need to water it down quite a bit. It needs to be able to run and flow across the page when you blow it, so don’t worry about adding too much water. You might want to add a few drops of food colouring to your watered down paint to make the colours really vibrant.
Start by drawing a few monster features (or other creature, or even people) in the middle of the page with the permanent markers. You need to use permanent markers as water based markers will run when the paint is added, so explain to the kids how to use them carefully and cover your work surface. Make sure you leave enough room around your drawing for the paint.
Then spoon a few drops of paint wherever you want the monster’s hair to be, and start blowing!
As you blow the paint swirls and mixes and runs off in all directions making fabulous crazy hair looking patterns!
Keep blowing, and adding more paint, and blowing, and blowing some more, and eventually you’ll end up with some crazy looking blow paint monsters!
You’ll need lots of space to dry all your monsters, if your kids are like mine, they will make lots of them!
Are your kids all about the process of making art, or are they getting older and more interested in creating something?
If your kids like monsters and fun spooky things, check out our Halloween play dough mats.
You can buy this set of six Halloween play dough mats over in my shop.
There are six different play dough mats in this set, ready to print and play.
They are on sale at $3.99 for a limited time
Kate - Laughing Kids Learn says
This is such an awesome activity. I can imagine my little girl wanting to do pages and pages of monsters. Now that she is getting older she is actually showing signs of wanting to create more identifiable images. Love this Kate.
Meri cherry says
I love this activity Katie. It looks like so much fun. I think we are going to definitely give this a try. Thanks for the inspiration!
Nichole {youclevermonkey} says
What a great new spin on blow painting! Sharing :)
katepickle says
thank you!
Jasbir @jasbeeray says
Love blow paint and paint-fold art. Thank you for making it more interesting by creating a predrawn pictures.
katepickle says
Oh yes we love folded paper art too… we call it squish painting!
ajeeta says
This is really awesome. I know for a fact that my son would looove it. Thanks.
RemeiGG says
HAhaha, amazing! Totally doing this with my students :D
Thanks for sharing!
Science Kiddo says
What a fun idea! I love art ideas that are fresh and easy :) Thanks for the post.
Bethany says
Do you think this activity could be done by a toddler/preschool class?
katepickle says
I’ve done it with a class of 3-5 year olds… but you need to have some practice with the straws first to make sure everyone knows how to blow not suck!
I’d also start with just plain old blow painting – leave out the monster faces to start with and let the kids explore how the paint moves and how they can control then. Then you can draw monster features on afterwards or see if older kids want to draw a face first.
Sudha Kudva says
Thanks for sharing this idea… its unique, and gives kids a feeling of power creating their own monsters and directing its shape, color, etc versus being scared by monsters in their dreams