Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Snap Painting: Getting Close!


Okay, so I think we're finally starting to hone in on this one. If you've been reading along lo these past few months, you'll know I've been trying to figure out how to make snap painting work at Woodland Park. The basic idea is to dip rubber bands into paint, then snap them in a way that spatters paint onto paper. We first tried it medium-sized, and while it succeeded as an art experience for the kids (oh, did it succeed!), it wasn't snap painting. We then went super-sized, again a fun exploration with paint, but not snap painting. There is a good concept here, I'm certain, just seeking a way to be executed, a belief that motivated me to try going small on our third attempt.


This time I used craft sticks and a glue gun to make small slingshot style snap painters, then added some heart stencils in honor of Valentine's day. This is what I made on my hurried trial run just before the kids arrived:


Promising, although I did take a little paint in the face and it was still messy, but a bit less so on a smaller scale than it had been on the first two efforts. Kids fell on the project right away, which was encouraging.




And they started right away working on their snapping technique, experimenting with how to hold, aim, and operate the apparatus, although as has happened with the other snap painting experiments, some of them lost patience with how long it took to cover the white space and resorted to using their craft sticks like they were brushes. One weakness of these small snap painters was the tendency for the rubber bands to slip down to the smaller part of the "V" rendering them inoperable until an adult repositioned them, something that can be corrected with a cross beam.

One girl in particular stuck it out, continuing to experiment with the snap painters long after her friends had moved on to other things.



There's still some fiddling to do, but I think I'm just about there. We'll give them another go later this week.




I like the evidence of real experimentation on this piece.

There were several like this, where the snapping was abandoned, but the stencil
and "V" were still used to create a satisfactory heart shape.

And here's a similar result using a heart as a "mask".

I really like this free-form, stencil free effort.

And, as should happen with all preschool projects involving paint and paper,
we got in a little finger painting.

Fourth time's a charm . . .

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6 comments:

Scott said...

Your experiment is progressing. The paintings that really seem interesting are the ones that show the kids experimenting with the medium--a little snapping, a little blobbing, a little smearing. I can't wait to see what happens next.

pink and green mama MaryLea said...

I see a snap painting experiment with Silly Bandz in your future Tom!! ; )
--MaryLea

A Magical Childhood said...

These look so fun! BTW, I loved this article and thought of you when I read it. http://www.cracked.com/article_19026_5-reasons-parenting-one-place-we-shouldnt-imitate-china.html

There is some cussing and snarkiness, but there are some very good points too! :)
~Alicia

Play for Life said...

Well that interesting Tom because yesterday we had the children doing snap painting too only we tried really, really big rubber bands. We will post on it tomorrow but we found the children quite enjoyed strumming them like a guitar as apposed to flicking them because like you we all copped plenty of paint in the face each time we looked at a flick too closely!
Donna :) :)

Mrs.VogelPitts said...

I love this!! I'd love to see more.

BSK said...

Here's a thought...

Using the top of a shoe box, stretch bands around, either length wise or width wise, depending on the type of bands. Use brushes to apply paint and just snap them over the box itself. It becomes both the holder and the finished product. Or you could slide a piece of paper inside the lid of the box.

Note: This is entirely theoretical... I have no idea if this will actually work.