Restricting Colours... tutorial

One of the theories that I have read about with kids and art is that you should restrict the amount of colours they paint with, some think that a child should be introduced to one colour at a time and only use that one colour for a set amount of time. I'm not sure whether there is much point to go to that extreme, in my experience kids love to mix up colours as much as they do to actually paint. We tend to do a bit of everything, we did the Red, Blue and Yellow project a while back and that is still up on the wall, sometimes I limit the paint other times I let him have the lot. Yesterday I introduced Ebi-kun to a new technique and I limited his paint choice to three colours but he picked which three.

To do this you need:
a canvas, we used an oil painting board
masking tape
3 different colours of paint, we used acrylic
plus the usual paint equipment, brushes, apron, water, palette, cloth etc.

Start off by putting strips of masking tape over the board so that they criss-cross and make small patches of different sizes. Make sure the tape goes over the edge of the board and rub it down so that it is well sealed.
Then paint the patches showing through different colours, I suggested that he should try and not paint the same colours next to each other. Ebi-kun decided on silver, gold and black (he has been dying to get his hands on the gold and silver since spying them in the paint box). I recommend painting onto the masking tape so that you know the edges are all painted well.

 When you have painted all the sections it should look something like this... leave to dry.

 Then comes the fun bit, peel off the tape, it is easier if you peel it of in the reverse order that you laid them, the tape should leave like clean lines, sadly the black we used was a bit on the runny side and seeped under the tape. This is the finished piece, I really like it, looks very modern. Ebi-kun has already asked if he can do some more, he wants to try it with some other colours combinations and maybe a rainbow one. It is a great project on so many levels and helps with precision with a paint brush plus the finished piece is a great one to give as a gift.