Painting with marbles

Recently I came across a post over on Let the children play that showed paintings children had done with marbles, however I couldn't find the exact post to link to, sorry:(

I love painting personally, although I rarely get to a canvas now that I have small children, so I always love a project that brings out the paints. This was a really satisfying fun and messy project, so we took it into the yard. Painting with marbles within a frame creates a very Pollock like painting and shows children a different approach to painting and creativity than a brush.

We started with a blank canvas, I imagine any paintable surface would work, like a piece of wood, even card stock paper, if using paper if would have to lay on a firm bottom though, a tray perhaps.

Then I taped cardboard around the sides, use some stronger tape to keep the sides secure while rolling the marbles.

I lined a wooden bowl with foil and added acrylic paints.

Keenan picked 3 marbles from his collection

We put one marble at a time into a paint color, and laid it on the canvas. With Keenan holding one side and I the other we then moved the marbles around within the frame. Once the marbles ran dry we dipped them again and continued. After a while I did add some paint directly to the canvas as we kept rolling the marbles around in the colors. Keenan was quite amazed at the patterns this whole process created, and took his task very seriously.

And after perhaps twenty minutes of rolling the marbles we decided the picture was finished.

Keenan was very proud of his creation.

Clean up was easy. The paint on the marbles washed right off, the foil with left over paint we discarded, and that was it. Simple and fun!!

~Happy creating~