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 . . .