Painting with nature

22nd September 2017

The world around us is filled with wonderful textures that look amazing translated onto a canvas. Nature Play activities are wonderful for fine motor skills, whilst also allowing the children’s inner artist to flourish with different painting tools. 

Today, we are incorporating elements of nature as a medium to paint. Recently, the children have taken to collecting pine cones, seed pods, and sticks to incorporate into their play. We have collected fallen yellow leaves and seeds from the old trees around the Carlton Gardens and have used this today for our art experience. To add a final touch, we have added a few yellow native bottle-brush flowers for inspiration. The children used the colours burnt sienna and peach as a colour palette to paint onto their leaves. The seeds used for our exercise today are from the fallen seeds off the elm trees near by.We have used cotton buds and sponges to create texture as the children test out the different effects, from soft to light strokes. 

The children were able to use language to describe the effects of each tool we used “I’m gentle because it will break” Said Aneesha. “I’m doing dot dots” said Eva. “I’m doing a hand paint.” Revealed Isabella as she dipped her hand into the paint pot and printed her hand on the leaf. “You can use these to roll.” said Tina as she uses her index finger to roll the seed over the leaf and spreading the paint across. Aneesha tested out the seeds and added extra texture to her canvas by rolling across a page creating a trail. This is an example of how seed pods, rocks and flowers can make excellent stamps. The rough and uneven texture makes for interesting random patterns.

Greta was interested in using the cotton buds to create a dot pattern on her leaf. She dipped her hand into the mixture and used the tips of her fingers as another way to create a dot effect on her canvas.

Eva's friend 'Grandpa Dog' had to sit on the sidelines as Eva was busy with her creation!

Such experiences provide many learning outcomes such as self-expression, the development of eye and hand coordination as well as fine motor development. The children also benefited from experimenting and exploring with a new paint tool as well as learning to identify colours. In this instance we could see shades of yellow, brown, cream, peach and green and the children were able to label these colours in conversation with one another.

It was great to see the children explore their creativity and imagination freely. The children could explore creating patterns transferred onto the paper, mixing coloured paint together and creating shapes and pictures with no restrictions or expectations.

Future learning may involve using nature to create art in other ways. This might involve painting with branches, leaves and stones to create more unique effects and to explore nature further. We could also begin moving beyond naming primary colours and begin to label secondary shades as the children develop their vocabulary.