We revisited two old art ideas today – both of them imitating watercolor painting without use of actual watercolors! – when Travis stumbled across something by accident. We were playing with his magnet set in water (yes, magnets work in water!) and he decided he wanted to dip his markers in as well.

I pulled out watercolor paper for him, and he loved the way that the wet marker tips looked smeary on the paper – just like watercolor paints. This was an activity I first did with him as a two year old – so long ago this blog didn’t exist! Quite fun to revisit with him at an older age.

It reminded me of a time we turned regular paint into something closer to “watercolors.” This was back in the fall, so our final product was Halloween “monsters”. This time we chose pretty spring pastels.

Mix your tempera paint with a little water, and you have a nice thin consistency that will work for this project.

Place a straw in each color; put your finger on top of the straw to create a vacuum, then drip onto watercolor paper.

Blow into the straw (make sure your children are old enough to blow out, not suck in!), and the paint will spread in beautiful patterns all over the paper.

Travis tired of the straw quickly, but loved telling me which color to put where until we had a beautiful spring picture.

We decided it looked like the tulips we’d seen in the park that day!