Water Gun Canvas

One of our most epic process art projects to date... and yes it was totally worth the effort and mess!

Several years back big bro and I enjoyed a great water gun paint fight where we wore white t-shirts and used water guns to cover each other with color. I knew 3 year old baby sis would love the process of using water guns for painting so I set her up with this awesome activity.

What you need:

- large canvas and easel (both from Michaels)
- water guns (I got these pump style ones from Walmart and they were perfect because they squirted so much at a time)
- acrylic paints and water
- cups
- old towel (just in case things get messy!)

How it works:

We started off by choosing a nice selection of colors and making the water gun paint mixture. I guessed a little on this but for every small bottle of acrylic paint I added an equal part of water (it approximately worked out at 1/3 a plastic cup of paint and 1/3 a cup of water). The paint I used was just the cheap Apple Barrel acrylic paint from Walmart. I gave the mixtures a really good stir with a fork and then set out all of the equipment at the end of the yard. Make sure there is lots of space around the paint zone!

Baby sis could not wait to get squirting and the results were awesome. She carefully filled up her water gun with paint and then aimed for the canvas!

She would let out little squeals of excitement each time the paint splattered on the canvas.

This was a great way for her to express creativity, but also it really worked her gross motor skills each time she filled and squirted the gun. She kept experimenting with different ways of squirting- from up close, from far away, in a straight line and in a curve.

Baby sis kept going and going. Layer after layer of color was splattered onto the canvas. It was like a new masterpiece was created every few minutes.

After all the paint had been used up we left the canvas to dry. It had such a great mixture of colors and even a fun dripping texture to it. It now hangs proudly in our toy room!