Animal Silhouettes

Mr 16 months will be moving into his own room shortly so we thought we should make some art for his walls.

Things you will need:

Masking tape
Printouts of silhouettes of your favourite animals
4x 15cm square canvasses
Acrylic paints in your favourite colours
Paint brushes

Instructions:

On a flat surface, take strips of masking tape and overlap them until it is wide enough to contain your animal silhouette. I just found these from a google image search, sized them appropriately and printed the out. Cut out your animal silhouettes and arrange them on the masking tape sheet with a piece of masking tape looped sticky side out underneath. Draw around the silhouette.

Carefully remove the masking tape from the surface, making sure it stays in one big piece. Cut out your animal silhouette being careful not to let the masking tape stick to itself. Place the masking tape animal silhouette on the canvas and make sure the edges are stuck down as well as possible.

Taking your favourite colours of acrylic paint, apply these to your canvas any which way you like. If you can, it is better to paint in the direction of from the masking tape to the canvas, rather than the other way around, to prevent lifting up the edges of the masking tape.

Allow the paint to partially dry before carefully removing the masking tape, and et voila you have your animal silhouette. Dry completely before hanging on your wall.

What the kids can do:

I arranged the masking tape and cut out the silhouette. Miss 5 drew around it. I cut out the silhouette in masking tape. This can be a bit tricky as the making tape likes to stick to itself. I then stuck it to the canvass. Mr 16 months started off the painting, and Miss 5 and I finished it off when he lost interest in painting and started trying to put the paint in his mouth. A bit later, when the paint had dried, I took the masking tape off the canvass, careful not to mess up the paint.

Miss 5 now wants to make a Unicorn silhouette painting for her room. I image I will be posting on this in the near future.