Drip Painting is a fun process art activity for kids. It’s easy to set up and creates a beautiful abstract painting to go on your fridge door. Toddlers, preschoolers, or older kids will love watching these water droplets splatter. Why not head outside these summer holidays and create your very own drip art.
When I started thinking about this art project for the first time, I was trying to come up with a way to create art using the rain. Well, I came up with a few ideas to try but something didn’t go my way. It didn’t rain. Day after day of sunny skies and I was beginning to get impatient. So I added the water myself and I got very excited when I saw what happened.
By the end of it all, we got to do a bit of science, make something beautiful and have fun all at the same time.
Adult supervision is required for all activities at all times. Some of the links provided in this blog are affiliate links. I will be paid a commission if you use this link to make a purchase.
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More Process Art for Kids
If you like the idea of introducing your child to process art then check out these other ideas.
- Block Painting
- Painting on Foil
- Rainbow Lightning
- Watercolor Yarn – Kids Process Art
- Bubble Painting
For more ideas, check out these amazing 60 Process Art Ideas for Kids.
Materials Needed for Drip Art
- Watercolor paper
- Food coloring
- Coffee filters
- Water (about 5 mLs)
- String
- Clothes pegs
How to make a Drip Painting for Kids
Setting up this picture is actually very simple. Essentially, you’re going to hang the coffee filters above the watercolor paper, and let the colored water drip onto the paper below.
1. Tie a loop of string to a support.
We used the beams of our patio but use whatever you have. A broom handle, balanced on the back of two chairs is another easy option that will work wonderfully.
2. Attach a clothes peg to the string.
This is so that it’s free to hold both the coffee filters and the string at the same time.
3. Place your watercolor paper underneath where you have hung up your string.
I like to place my watercolor paper on a cookie sheet first. I do this because it makes it so much easier to move the paint drip art around without making a mess.
4. Hang up your coffee filters
Arranged them so that you can pour water into it easily. The next step can vary, depending on what works best for your family.
5. Add the food coloring
You can either add a few drops of food coloring directly onto the coffee filter and then add about 5 mLs of water afterward, as we did.
Or you can add the food coloring to the water first, and then pour it into the coffee filter together.
6. Add your water.
The water will drip through the coffee filters and onto the paper below. You can either do one color at a time, or you can do as many colors as you like. If it’s a windy day then the coffee filters will sway in the breeze and splatter all over the paper. If it’s a calm day, then you can get your kids to swing it themselves and have fun making their abstract art cover the entire surface of the paper.
I did these on a windy day and found that having 3 colors drip at the same time worked well in the beginning, but after a few minutes they all got tangled together and instead of dripping onto the paper, the yellow and blue, which were higher up, just dripped onto the red which was lowest down.
Results
This is how our drip art looked once they were dried. I love how the colors splattered when they landed, there are these little flecks of color all over the page.
In the second picture you can also see how the colors mixed together. Although we started off with the three primary colors the end result has orange, purple and brown in there too.
You can also see how there are darker rings of color. When the paper was wet it created all of these hills and valleys. The water pooled in the valleys, but as the picture dried there was a bit of capillary action going on and the color traveled up the hills.
You can see how with drip painting, we got to do a bit of science, make something beautiful and have fun at the same time.
Are you going to try this Drip Painting for Kids? Don’t forget to pin the idea for later.
