Watercolor Painting with Markers

M has been doing this forever and somehow I’ve never posted about it.  This was something he discovered completely on his own! 

We had a set of 6 chunky markers and he left them out for several days without their lids on.  Of course they were completely dried out by the time we realized it.   This happened about a year ago, and he still has, and uses,  the same markers!  His easel has a spot for a cup of water (for watercolor painting obviously), and one day he filled it up with water, dipped his dried markers in the water, and began drawing with them like nothing had happened.  

I think I’ve read somewhere that you can use dried markers this way, but I have no idea how M knew it!  He has made some really neat artwork in this way… kind of like regular marker drawing with a bit of watercolor painting here and there.  Again, he’s been doing this for the past year and the markers are still working great (as long as they are wet).

Want to see a little demonstration?  :)

Dip the dried up marker into the water:
Color on your paper:
And voila!  Beautiful artwork:
So, put those old markers to good use! :)

Have a beautiful day! :)  

The Art Box – 5/10/10

With 4 play dates last week (all were hosted at our house, I might add…  what was I thinking?) , and the rest of the time spent on errands, playing outside, etc., not much in the way of free art was done.  A couple of crafts for Mother’s Day made their way in to our busy week, but that was about all we had time for.  The Art Box was left untouched, except for this: (Mr. Grumpy was not happy about posing with it, but wouldn’t let go of it so I could take a picture of just the bag.)

It’s M’s new library book bag.  We take home anywhere from 20 to 40 books a week from our library and our old book bag was literally falling apart.  I bought some fabric markers and gave him his brand new bag.  He enjoyed drawing on it, and from what I was able to gather this isn’t anything in particular, just (very) abstract art. :) 

He always enjoys having something “different” to draw, paint, or color on.  I might let him add some embellishments later… we’ll see!

Have some children’s art you’d like to show off?  Link it up below (remember to link back here in your blog post)!

Have a beautiful day! :)