Watercolor for 3 year olds (long)
Phlip
Ashley keeps catching me painting characters for the comics on my Web
page. I use a tiny little delicate brush and black ink. I realize if I
don't assuage her burning curiosity she will do it herself, with
terrible consequences.
No age is too young for arts and crafts, but no carpet is stain-proof.
A child who can eat at a table without spilling is old enough to
paint.
Real artist paint dries indelibly. Get a children's watercolor paint
set - the kind with the little soluble cakes - that washes out.
This package will probably contain a plastic paint brush. Discard it.
Go to an art supply store's real paint brush selection, and find a
brush with a chisel head and natural fiber bristles. Its advertising
material should list "all media" or "oils acrylics and watercolors."
Brushes that target watercolor alone will be too soft for a child.
Make sure the bristles curve together at the tip - tug and twist them
to see if they rock in the ferrule, and knead the ferrule to ensure it
is tight with the wooden handle.
The chisel should not be so small the child cannot cover large areas,
nor too big. We chose 1 centimeter wide and 3/4 inch long. The
bristles should be long enough they can contain paint reserves for the
tip, and just stiff enough that the tip stays sharp but deforms
gracefully. A good brush, although 1 centimeter wide, can form very
thin lines used edgewise or on a corner.
The total buy-in so far is US 3 dollars. Real artists' paint brushes,
without a weird size or shape, are a commodity item and sell for maybe
US 85 cents each. If you get more brushes, the second should be round;
either a soft Japanese "sumi" brush, or a stiff-bristled brush with a
point. Don't get wall-painter's brushes, or those where all fibers are
the same length and end in a flat tip. Plastic bristles are okay if
each one tapers to a point like natural hairs do.
Now consider the paper. Hammermill Bond paper is available for free at
your office's copy machine. Start with this, but the paper is thin,
and has acid left from bleaching. Thin paper warps when unevenly wet;
one paint stripe will raise little blisters; paint pools between these
and dries unevenly. And if you hang the masterpiece on the
refrigerator, after a few months the acid burns the cellulose and
turns the paper yellow.
Real artist's watercolor paper is slightly textured to hold paint
evenly, and to receive "scumble"; thin dotted patterns from pressing
all the liquid from a brush and then dragging it across the paper. It
is also thick enough to resist warping, and contains alkali to buffer
the acid. And it starts at 6 dollars per booklet; above this price are
booklets where the sheets are preglued to four bindings instead of one
around the perimeter of the paper. This stretching ultimately solves
the warping problem. The high-end stuff can be 50 dollars a sheet, and
must be hand-stretched, while wet, onto a board using rabbit-glue
tape.
Place your imps in a chair used for eating; preferably so the surface
is a few inches below their elbows. Do not spread newspaper over the
tabletop; any spilled paint can be simply sponged up. But do think
about what could happen to the floor. Do not incline the painting
surface.
Place the paper in front of them, the watercolor cakes to their right
(or left) and two very low bowls - one for clean and one for dirty -
just to the right of the cakes. Each bowl contains about a centimeter
of water. Keep a carafe of water near by (and, of course a sponge,
towel, mop, bucket, etc.).
Hold the brush an inch above the ferrule (its thickest part), and
demonstrate mashing the brush in one bowl to clean it, dunking in the
second to wet it, and then lathering the cake. Draw a stripe on the
paper. The first time Ashley saw this she was so excited she actually
spoke English. She said, "Oh, yeah!"
The next day while watching Story Time on PBS I pointed out the
watercolor artifacts in the illustrations for the book they were
reading, and Ashley "got it."
As the child plays, show how more water makes the color lighter, and
how grinding more paint out of the cake makes the color very thick and
bright. Let the child work an area with color, then put in a new
color, wet on wet, and see what happens when they mix. Show how to add
clean water to an area and then wash color into it. Let a painting dry
and then return to it - new paint on top of dry works different from
wet-on-wet.
As usual with all learning activities stop the kids before they tire
of it. Announce "this paper will be the last one, because Mommy wants
to [make up something]." Rinse the brushes in cold water and wrap them
in a paper towel. Stop children early to let them anticipate the next
time they will get to paint.
-- Phlip
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