We have been doing a lot more “focused” art lately – working on drawing skills and projects linked to the kids art awards, which has been really good but at the same time I kind of feel like some of the fun has been missing. So the kids and I decided to do a painting project just for fun, nothing that ties into any project but just something they liked. They choose animal silhouettes (dinosaurs would also work really well with this).
We started by creating our backgrounds. We did two versions – one circular – starting with a white centre and then getting darker and one more like a flash with lines going out – again starting with a white centre and then getting darker.
We left our backgrounds to dry overnight and then the kids started drawing in their animals. We kept the animals very stylized as our idea was – dark animal silhouettes against a colourful background.
And then we painted the animals. The first two were both shark paintings. My daughter actually created a simple shark template which they cut out and then traced around to get a consistent shape.
But then we got some variety.
A cat with swallows
The Rhinos.
And bats and swallows (apparently the bats are flying away and the swallows are arriving)
We did the paintings over 2 days, but it was 2 relaxed days of art and chatting, just the way I like our art sessions to be. And even though we kept our drawings very simple I think the dark silhouette works really well. If your kids are not happy to draw their own animals you could look for some simple templates (Activity Village have a bunch). Or even Stick puppet outlines would work because you only need the basic shape.
I really like the end results but even if the end paintings had been a total mess it was just some fun art, playing with brush strokes and colours.
ofamily learning together 
These are awesome!
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