Updated March 2024

We love painting, but sometimes it can feel like we do the same old painting activities over and over again. So here are 7 new painting ideas to try!

And if you are looking for recommendations on what paint to use, check out our post on the best paints for kids.

Painting Ideas for Kids

1. Spin Painting

All you need is paint, circular paper, and a salad spinner for this super-fun action art activity.

2. Drip Painting

Explore gravity in art with this easy and fun art activity that results in unique artwork every time.

3. Blot Art

Also known as blotto painting, smush painting, or squish painting. No matter what you call it, though, it’s a super fun art activity.

4. Pointillism Art with Cotton Swabs 

Q-tip painting is an easy art project you can set up quickly. It can also be used to learn about Seurat, Pointillism, and Impressionism.

5. Blow Painting with Straws

Simple, yet lots of fun for kids of all ages. Use a straw to blow liquid paint around on the paper, creating interesting designs.

6. Splatter Painting

Splatter painting is a favorite messy art activity for kids of all ages!

7. Rainbow Scrape Painting

Scraper art is a fun, process art activity for kids and can be used to create a variety of textures and looks, including scraper art rainbows.

More Painting Ideas for Kids

• The Best Art Ideas for Kids in 2023
• The Best Paints for Kids
• 11 Amazing Painting Activities for Preschoolers
• Painting with Wheels
• Splat Painting: Easy and Fun Action Art for Children
• Painting for Kids at The Artful Parent

Want even more creative ideas?

Check out our Artful Parent Starter Pack!

Engage your kids through art and creativity with this printable booklet where you’ll find all of our best tips, tricks, and ideas for getting started on your artful parenting journey!

SHOP NOW

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Updated March 2024

We all love symmetry painting, right? Kids love it. It’s easy, fun, and the result is unique every time.

These symmetry paintings are also known by many other names. Some people call them inkblot prints, blotto painting or prints, smash art, smush art, squish painting, and more.

Regardless of the name, what could be more perfect for painting butterflies?!

They turn out beautifully every time!

Here’s a video of the butterfly painting art activity in action.

How to Paint Butterflies

MATERIALS

• Paper
• Scissors
• Tempera paint
• Small cups
• Spoons

Variations and Ideas

• Add details to your butterflies after the paint dries. For example, you could draw details or faces over the dry paint with markers. Or glue googly eyes on the faces.
• You can also make regular symmetry paintings (on rectangular paper), then cut the butterflies out after the paintings dry.
• Tack a kaleidoscope of butterflies onto the wall together (that’s what a group of butterflies is called!) or string them into a butterfly bunting.

More Nature Painting Ideas

• Gorgeous Watercolor Butterflies
• 5 Nature Based Art Ideas for Toddlers & Preschoolers
• 22 Nature Art Ideas for Kids
• 13 Nature Walk Ideas
• Painting Butterfly Mobiles
• 12 Ideas for Spring Crafts for Kids

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Updated April 2024

My kids LOVE foam painting. It’s fun, it’s fluffy and they like to paint their toys, cars, bodies and anything else in reach.

It’s easy to cleanup, I promise!

This is one of those art activities that we save for warmer weather. Then the mess is less stressful, and the kids can have all the fun they want. And cleanup is easy. Keep everything contained on a tray or hose the kids down with water afterwards.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, back to how much my kids love this art and play activity.

Foam Painting for Kids

We use our foam paint for sensory play mostly. I set out some animals, dinosaurs, or transportation vehicles and let my kids paint. (This usually leads to painting their whole bodies so I keep them minimally dressed for this project.)

To include the kids on the cleanup, I like to set out a tub of soapy water and extend the play. With sponges, they get to work with giving their toys a bath.

(If you’re looking to try foam paint on paper, see this post. You can use the same supplies with a totally different art experience!)

How to Make Foam Paint

MATERIALS

• shaving foam
• liquid watercolors
• paint brushes

I make foam paint with just two ingredients––shaving foam and liquid watercolors.

Mix together and whip to combine. Be sure there is no remaining unmixed paint (which can seriously stain clothing).

If you are looking for a ready-made paint, you might try this foam paint. It acts very similar to shaving foam, but smells like paint.

We guarantee your kids will love painting and playing with foam paint!

More Sensory Play for Kids

• What to Do with Foam Paint?
• How to Make Aquafaba for Kids
• How to Make Oobleck
• The Ultimate Guide to Sensory Play
• What is Sensory Play & Why It’s Important for Kids
• Shaving Cream Sensory Play Ideas for Kids

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Updated April 2024

Painting with oil pastels and baby oil is an Artful Parent classic. It’s one of our favorite invitations to create because it’s simple to set up, relatively mess-free, and kids love it!

They draw with pastels and then use a bit of baby oil to blend the colors together, creating a cool painted effect. Kids can try blending colors together, making patterns, or even drawing pictures and turning them into ‘paintings.’

Here’s a video of this art technique in action:

And here are the step-by-step instructions, plus a few fun variations!

Oil Pastel Painting with Kids

MATERIALS

• Sturdy paper
• Oil pastels (we also love the neon version)
• Vegetable oil or baby oil
• Q-tips / cotton swabs

That’s all there is to it! So simple and yet so fun. And if you’d like to take things a step further, try these fun variations.

Oil Pastel Painting Variations

• Try some watercolor resist by painting with watercolors over your finished oil pastel painting.
• Draw with oil pastels, paint with watercolors, let dry, then do the oil rubbing step.
• Draw a picture with Sharpie permanent markers first, then add oil pastels to color in some areas, then do the oil rubbing step.

If you have oil pastels in the house, we highly recommend giving this fun technique a try with your kids! (And joining in yourself, of course.)

More Painting Ideas for Kids

• 7 Fun Painting Ideas for Kids to Try
• How to Make Raised Salt Paintings
• How to Do Pointillism Painting with Cotton Swabs
• How to Do Scrape Painting
• 5 Easy After School Art Invitations for Kids
• 10 Invitations to Create for Kids

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Updated March 2024

A children’s easel can be a wonderful art space for kids, especially as it allows young children to stand and use a full range of motion while they create.

However, you may want to shake things up a bit in order to keep the interest alive in an easel. If you leave an easel in one place with the same art materials all the time your children might start ignoring it.

We are all for dedicated art spaces but dedicated does not mean static. We’ve tried many new ideas with our children’s easel and are happy to say that changing things up really works!

A note about materials: you don’t need anything too fancy for an easel. We really like the Little Partners one, as well as the less expensive IKEA version. But you can also fashion your own using cardboard!

Ideas to Use a Children’s Easel

1. Try a new location

We find the best way to renew interest in our easel is to move it to a new spot in the house. Or better yet, move it outside! All of a sudden, it’s like a whole new art experience for kids.

2. Collage at the easel

Leave out an invitation to collage for your kids at the easel and see what they come up with. Set up the easel with collage materials like glue or glue sticks and construction paper shapes and we guarantee your kids will get right to it.

Here are lots of collage art ideas for kids.

3. Paint with water

Set up the chalkboard side of the easel with a cup of water and a paintbrush for water painting. Our kids love this! They paint over the entire chalkboard surface, use a cloth to dry it off, and then paint with water again.

You can also make your own chalk paint!

4. Try a new art material on the easel.

Setting out a new art material on the easel is another easy way to encourage interest. Your kids will have a blast exploring the new materials at the tried-and-true easel.

Some new materials you could try include:

• Squeezable glitter glue
• Geometric shape stickers
• Feathers and colored masking tape
• Paint sticks
• Neon watercolors
• Gel crayons
• Funky brushes

5. Paint at the children’s easel!

This is what easels are for, right? And your kids will absolutely love painting on it.

6. Try drip painting!

Drip painting is an easy and fun action art activity for kids. Explore gravity in art by dripping paint onto the easel paper. The results are unique and lovely!

More Painting Ideas for Kids

• The Best Paints for Kids
• 7 Fun Painting Ideas for Kids to Try
• 11 Painting Art Activities for Preschoolers
• The Best Kids Art Ideas for 2024
• How to do Splatter Painting with Kids
• Painting with a Kids Art Easel Outdoors

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Updated March 2024

Some days are meant for painting outdoors. Especially in the summer.

When the weather is perfect, we like to carry the art easel out to the backyard, add a new roll of paper, and set out some tempera paint.

There’s something about the sunshine and fresh air that breathes new life into regular old art supplies!

If the sun is shining where you are today, we recommend you bring the art outside and see what happens.

Setting Up the Art Easel Outdoors

MATERIALS

• Easel (we have this easel and love it; it comes with paint cups and a roll of paper)
• No-spill paint cups or divided paint cups that hold 2 colors at once
• Easel paper
• Tempera paint
• Paint brushes

Once you bring the easel outside, we think you’ll want to keep it out there! We like to leave ours on our covered porch, where it’s protected from the elements, but ready whenever we want to use it.

The best thing about an art easel is that you can use it so many ways. Not only is it great for extra messy painting, but also for large-scale drawing.

Set it up with some markers or oil pastels and let kids draw BIG. They might be inspired by the landscape around them, or they might come up with something totally imaginary.

If you’re looking for more ways to use your art easel, be sure to check out our ideas to encourage interest in your child’s easel.

What do you think? Will you bring your easel and art supplies outside today?

More Outdoor Art Ideas

• 24 Outdoor Art Ideas for Kids
• 10 DIY Outdoor Games for Summer
• 16 Garden + Nature Crafts for Kids
• 5 Nature Art Ideas for Kids
• 11 Ways to Have a Creative Summer with Kids

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Updated March 2024

Drip painting is an art technique that was popularized by Jackson Pollock (you can see footage of him drip painting).

We’ve done lots of splatter painting, but drip painting is a totally different but equally fun way to paint!

Drip painting is super easy and a great way to learn about viscosity and gravity while making some interesting artworks.

Plus, it’s a lot more controlled (read: less messy) than splatter painting and results in a completely different experience and effect.

We love to do drip painting at a DIY cardboard easel, which is super easy to make and provides just the right angle for lots of drips!

Drip Painting at a Cardboard Easel

MATERIALS

• 3 pieces of cardboard to make a quick DIY cardboard easel*
• Tape
• Paper
• Tempera paint
• Spoon or brush

*You can do this at a regular easel or simply prop a piece of cardboard up against a wall outside or something inside. We made simple cardboard easels by taping three pieces of cardboard (saved from paper pads) together into a triangle.

Dripping paint is fun!

Kids can experiment with small drips, big drips, and different color combinations. It’s interesting to watch the colors drip into each other and mix.

How about you? Have you tried drip painting art with your kids yet?

More Painting Ideas for Kids

• 7 Fun Painting Ideas for Kids to Try
• How to do Splat Painting for Kids
• 11 Painting Art Activities for Preschoolers
• How to do Splatter Painting with Kids
• 14 Easy Dot Art Ideas for Kids
• Painting with a Kids Art Easel Outdoors

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Updated March 2024

One of our favorite watercolor techniques is rubbing alcohol on watercolor paint.

We don’t use it as much as salt on watercolors, just because it’s a bit more of a commitment and a tad smelly. But the rubbing alcohol has such a dramatic effect on the wet watercolor paint, repelling it and leaving a perfect, lighter circle wherever we drop it. It’s mesmerizing!

This watercolor technique is perfect to create patterns on butterfly wings. We also love to use it to make bubbles in water, stars in the night sky, decorations on hearts and flowers, and even some abstract art.

Here’s a brief video showing the rubbing alcohol technique in action as we painted watercolor butterflies and other artworks.

Watercolor Butterflies for Kids

MATERIALS

• Liquid watercolors*
• Paint brushes
• Watercolor paper or card stock
• Rubbing alcohol (you can get this for super cheap at the grocery store or drug store)
• Droppers or pipettes

*You can also use watercolor cakes, but if so, be extra generous with the water so that the paint is pretty liquid.

Sometimes the watercolors all bleed together a bit when using wet on wet watercolor like this, which can look really cool.

You can use this rubbing alcohol technique to create all kinds of beautiful effects on your paper: tentacles on an octopus, bubbles in water, a night sky, abstract art, or anything else you like! You and your children will want to keep coming back to this fun watercolor option!

Want another fun butterfly painting idea? Try Butterfly Symmetry Paintings!

More Watercolor Ideas for Kids

• 7 Watercolor Techniques for Kids
• 12 Awesome Watercolor Art Activities for Kids (+ A Free Printable Guide!)
• 6 Amazing Watercolor Resist Techniques To Try With Kids

Want even more creative ideas?

Check out our Spring Creativity pack!

Let creativity blossom with this fun bundle of art activities perfect for Spring!! This 40-page printable eBook is full of coloring pages, drawing prompts, games, and more!

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Updated July 2023

Raised salt painting is awesome. We mean, AWESOME.

This is one of our top art activities for kids of all ages. If you haven’t tried raised salt painting yet, now’s your chance!

And best of all, it only requires a few, simple materials! You probably have them all at home right now.

First here’s a video of the salt painting in action, then, below is the step-by-step tutorial for this fun art activity.

Raised Salt Paintings

MATERIALS

• Cardstock* or sturdy paper
• Squeeze bottle of glue
• Table salt
• Shallow dish or tray to work on
• Liquid watercolors**
• Paint brushes or droppers

*Any sturdy art surface will do. We’ve done this with cardstock, poster board, cardboard, watercolor paper, paper plates, and foam core.

**Liquid watercolors are great for this activity. If you don’t have any, you can make your own by watering down food coloring or even using tempera cakes with a lot of water.

Once dry, display your new artwork!

You can use this glue + salt + watercolor technique to write names/words, nature scenes, squiggles and scribbles, faces, and more!

Raised salt paintings are an all-time favorite art activity here at the Artful Parent. And, like those others, it’s one that every kid we know loves, too. It’s even one of our Top 10 All-Time Favorite Art Activities for Kids!

How about you? Have you tried raised salt painting with your kids yet?

People Also Ask

• What do I need for raised salt painting? All you need for this fun process art activity is white glue, salt, thick paper, paintand paintbrushes!
• What kind of paint do you use for raised salt painting? We like liquid watercolors but you could also use watered down food coloring, or watered down tempera paint.

More Painting Ideas for Kids

• 7 Watercolor Techniques for Kids
• How to Do Splatter Painting
• Watercolor Resist Art with Young Children
• Blow Painting with Straws
• 3 Space Watercolor Art Projects for Kids
• How to Do Pointillism Art

Want even more creative ideas?

Check out our Artful Parent Starter Pack!

Engage your kids through art and creativity with this printable booklet where you’ll find all of our best tips, tricks, and ideas for getting started on your artful parenting journey!

SHOP NOW

Pin It for Later

The post How to Make Raised Salt Paintings appeared first on The Artful Parent.

Updated July 2023

Splat painting is fun, fun, fun.

And it’s so simple!

• Dip cotton balls in paint.
• Place paint-soaked cotton ball on paper.
• Hit it with a small wooden mallet or spoon.

Then watch as paint splats and splatters out of the cotton ball.

Your kids will want to do it over and over again!

Here’s a brief video showing splat painting in action. And then keep scrolling for a quick tutorial.

Splat Painting for Kids

MATERIALS

• Cotton balls
• Small cups (we actually used jelly jars)
• Liquid watercolor paint (or food coloring)
• Watercolor paper or card stock
• Small wooden mallet*

*Make your own by hot-gluing a large wood bead to the end of a wooden dowel as we did. Or use a drumstick or the mallet that comes with a xylophone set or a pounding toy. You can also use a spoon!

If your kids are looking for more opportunities to get messy, try these splat painting ideas, too!

• Drop paint-covered cotton balls onto paper from a distance (standing up, on a chair, or from a porch)
• Fill water balloons with DIY chalk paint and drop onto the sidewalk (on Growing a Jeweled Rose)
• Splat painting with paint dots and cotton rounds (on A Crafty Morning)

People Also Ask

• How do you splatter paint with a straw? You can achieve splat-like results by dripping paint onto paper and then blowing the wet paint with a straw! Blow painting is one of our favorite art activities!
• How do you splat paint? It’s easy! Simply dip cotton balls in paint, then place paint-soaked cotton ball on paper. Next, hit it with a small wooden mallet or spoon and watch as paint splats and splatters out of the cotton ball!
• What paint do you use for splatter painting? You can use liquid watercolors, food coloring, or watered down tempera paint.

More Messy Art Ideas for Kids

• Splatter Painting with Kids
• Painting with Wheels: Easy Action Art Activity for Kids
• Action Art for Kids: Try Painting with a Drill & Brush!
• 7 Fun Painting Ideas for Kids to Try
• How to Do Spin Art with a Salad Spinner
• Marble Painting for Kids

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