Tin Foil Art

I have two creative kids who love to draw. My 9-year-old creates magical lands full of beasts and mythical creatures. My 5-year-old like to draw families, with lots of hearts and kisses. Most often this drawing starts off on a standard piece of white paper, which is all well and good but sometimes it’s fun to mix things up a little.

Drawing encourages children to tap into their creative brain and stimulates they imagination. It lets them make up stories or work out real-life problems. And of course it helps them get to grips with pencils and develop their fine motor skills.  If you have kids who love to be creative, why not develop this and offer them different and unusual things to draw on, to challenge them and stretch them. And if you have children who aren’t interested in drawing but, knowing the benefits of it, you’d like to encourage them to have a try, offering them something intriguing to drawn on could be just the thing to get them started.

Paper Free Art

I run a Kids Art Explorers project over at my own blog, where we pick a different art technique or material each month and explore it and see what art we can create – with lots of other families joining in with us. In the past we’ve tried yarn art and painting with anything but a paint brush, but this month we’re focusing on Paper Free Art. We’ve been experimenting with things that aren’t just that small piece of white paper and seeing what art we can create with them. We’ve already tried a big, flat cardboard box and the kitchen table (OK, we did cover it in newspaper first) but here’s an idea for a canvas we’d never tried before: tin foil.

Tin Foil Art

It turns out tin foil is great for art. We set out some sheets of the foil and a selection of writing implements: pencils, wax crayons and permanent and wipeable marker pens, and tried each to see what the results would be. With some of the pens the children got clear colors, with others the ink wiped off to leave the markings of their drawing.

They also discovered they could create an embossed effect, drawing a design on one side and then flipping over the tin foil to reveal the raised art on the reverse. Older children can have fun writing back-to-front messages in this way, turning over to see if they’ve produced the letters all the right way round.

Have you ever tried tin foil art with your children?

What other materials do you use when you fancy a change from plain white paper?

Here are a few other foil projects for kids from the Quirky Mommas:

• Tin Foil Collage
• Fun with Foil
• Creative Techniques for Craft Creations