We love painting with watercolor because of how versatile it is. There are so many fun techniques that produce different results.

One of those techniques is moving the paint around on the paper by blowing into straws. This process is an easy activity that is very exciting for children. They love seeing their paint splatter across the paper!

The finished papers from this activity can be used to create a variety of images such as branches, trees, flowers, hair, bugs, aliens, or just an abstract design. Scroll below to see the materials and process we used and what we ended up doing with these papers.

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Supplies:

• Watercolor (or watered down food coloring)
• Watercolor paper or other heavy weight art paper
• Eye dropper or Pipettes
• Straws

 

Steps:

We started by using pipettes to drop some paint onto our paper. My girls loved this step just as much as the blowing!

You will want to use watercolor paper or a heavy weight art paper so the paint doesn’t absorb before you can blow it.

We then used straws to blow the paint in different directions. We turned our papers to blow it in the direction we wanted. I would recommend using a shorter straw but the girls insisted on using these big ones!

They loved dropping the paint and popping the bubbles with their fingers!

Can you tell that Lila LOVED this process! Pure excitement!

Willa turned this into a finger painting activity! Sigh…oh well…I have to remind myself that it is the process rather than product with this 2 year old!

See how we used the papers from this activity for our Mixed Media Bugs and also used this blowing technique for these fingerprint trees!

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What is your favorite watercolor method?