What are some fun painting materials for my child?
I love painting with Acrylic paint. And because I own so many tubes of paint, my niece and nephew love to use them to create masterpieces of their own. Now if you’ve ever used acrylic or oil paints, you’ll know they’re quiet expensive. Children, of all ages, have a tendency to use a lot more paint than they need.
One of the first things we work on in our art program is to teach them how to manage the supplies. How less is more, but it is a learning process. but what would you do when your child wants to paint, or has a class that requires paint. How will you balance between giving them the right tools and not spending too much money on supplies? To do that, we need to understand what types of paint are out there.
Gouache/Tempera Paints
Poster paints are liquid paints that look like acrylics in their texture.
You can find them in almost any colour. The fun thing about them is that they also come in metallic, pearl, neon, pastel and even glitter finishes. How fantastic is that! Now here’s another fun tip about those paints. You can add water to them and they will act like watercolours. You can also add white, liquid glue and they will look like acrylic paint. They are so versatile!
Another little tip, you can now buy them in solid format. That means you get the joy of painting without the mess! As far as I know, no other painting material is available in a similar format. Those are some of the reasons why we love tempera, especially for younger artists. they allow children to learn, experiment and explore different techniques. At the same time, they’re not as expensive as acrylics.
You can even buy big bottles to keep at home if your child loves to paint a lot. They will save you a lot of trips to the store and a lot of empty containers at home. One final tip, add a drop of soap to the paint containers. That way, if it gets on their clothes, it will be easier to wash it out.
Acrylic Paint
With so many benefits to buying poster paint, you might be wondering why invest in acrylics at all? Well, Acrylics are a more advanced painting material. You can always buy craft acrylic or student acrylics to young artists. I would recommend they start learning to use it around age 10. Once they are familiar with the texture through tempera, they can master acrylics in no time.
They can also learn more advanced painting techniques with acrylics. When buying acrylics, be careful of the following. Make sure you buy the right consistency for the type of painting. There are paints designed for fluid painting, that means they will be more liquid. Be careful and read the label before buying to make sure it’s not for fluid painting. Another mistake to avoid is buying the small paint tubes. Young artists will go through them in no time and they are usually quiet expensive.
Instead, buy the individual tubes that come in bigger sizes like 75 ml or more
No matter which type of paint you decided to buy for your children, remember this. One problem with paint is that children tend to waste a lot of it when left unsupervised. Children overestimate how much paint they will need for a project. They will pour too much and throw away the unused paint.
To avoid this, you can first instruct them to start by pouring out little paint and then adding more as needed. here’s a good chart to use for measurement.
Now you know some of the differences between the types of paint. The next time you visit the art supply store, you’ll know exactly what you’re looking for. And if you’re still confused, use the information you learned here as a starting point and ask for help.
Is your little artist ready for more? Join one of our classes and learn all the different materials and fun tricks you can use with paint. Sign up now and we will contact you with more information. And if you found this article useful, go ahead and share it with your friends and family
Happy painting
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