Fun Kids Craft
Pointillism Trees for Kids
Pointillism is a technique of printing dots of different colours together to build up pictures. In the larger artworks, like those of Monet and Van Gogh, the dots blend together to make different colours and shapes in the viewer’s eye. When the viewer steps up close to the painting, they can see that it’s actually all made up of little dots.
This is a much simpler version of the pointillism technique. Kids print dots with cotton buds to build up a picture of an Autumn tree, with yellow, orange and red leaves falling to the ground.
Summary
Time: 15 minutes
Ages: Toddlers to Teens
Difficulty: Easy peasy
You will need:
- Piece of paper or card
- Paints
- Paintbrush
- Cotton buds (ear buds)
Step 1: Paint the tree trunk and branches
First paint a simple tree trunk on your paper using brown paint and a paintbrush.
Add a few branches reaching out as well.
Step 2: Choose your leaf colours
Any kind of paint works well for this painting, but the tree shown here is done with acrylic paints.
Choose a selection of colours. Add each one onto a paint tray or paper plate.
Here there are lots of autumnal colours, such as oranges, reds, yellows and browns.
Now dip an cotton bud into one colour and start printing dots all around the tree branches.
Step 3: Build up the leaves
Take a fresh cotton bud and dip it into another colour. Print out more little dots around the branches.
We’ve made ours very natural looking with leaves clumped around each branch. You could choose instead to make a stylised tree by printing the dots in a circle around the trunk, or even a square or triangle.
Keep going until you’ve added all the colour leaves you want.
Step 4: Add some fallen leaves
If you like you can add some prints on the ground next to the foot of the tree to make small piles of fallen leaves.
And that’s it! You’ve made your first pointillism tree.
If you’ve enjoyed it you can try making more with different colours. Perhaps you can do one with spring blossoms using light and dark pinks.
How to adjust this activity for toddlers
Cotton buds may be too small for toddlers to hold and print with.
Instead you can use something bigger such as:
- Cotton balls, pinched with a peg and dipped in paints
- Leftover wine corks. Again just dip in paint and print dots
The leaf dots will be larger, but if you can mix up dots of different colours it will look just as impressive!
Pointillism Trees for Kids
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