Cindy Crushes Programming: Splatter Painting

It was profoundly interesting to me when I received Cindy’s newest craft/program outline in my inbox to see that it involved splatter painting. You see, splatter painting is something that Thing 2 has recently become obsessed with and I found myself doing a lot of it this weekend. We made t-shirts.

We splatter painted canvases.

And Thing 2’s Girl Scout troop is in the process of making and installing Little Free Libraries around town and they’ve been splatter painting those as well. Splatter painting is very popular right now. So today, Cindy is going to talk to us about splatter painting and she is so very on trend.

Background: This craft was a teen patron requested during my Teen Advisory Group. I then researched splatter art.  There are a few tips on splatter art that I learned while doing my research that I am going to include. I learned that splatter art was a favorite style of Jackson Pollack. I printed out a few different pictures for my teens to look at to get ideas.

Splatter Paint Tutorial

Supplies:

• Tiles
• Paint (Various types)
• Brushes (Various types0
• Tablecloths

Step One:  Make sure to use a tablecloth. This is a very messy style of art. I chose to do it on the floor of our children’s programming room because there is no carpet and I could cover the floor with the tablecloth. I also warned the teens to not wear their best clothes just in case. One item of clothing, which I did not think about was shoes and while my library does have a rule that you must wear shoes, I realized maybe we could take off our shoes for this craft just this one time. I realized how important shoes are to teens and with school starting, I wanted to protect their shoes.

Step Two: Grab a tile. I used tiles because they are very cheap. This is one of my go to craft supplies. (Editor’s Note: You can buy bulk tiles from places like Oriental Trading Company at a decent price.)

Step three: Paint and paintbrushes. This is the most important art tip I learned. You have to use a variety of paints and brush types and sizes. This helps make each splatter look different.

DIY Tutorial on Splatter Paint

Step Four: Let the splatter begin. Splatter art is very simple to do. Put paint on the brush and splatter it on the tile. I liked to use a flick motion. I also let it drip on the tile. Those splatters worked the best. I let the teen pick how they wanted to do this step after explaining the various ways they could splatter.  

Step Five: Let dry. It could take over 24 hours to dry. I let some teens borrow a few of my aluminum cooking trays to take it home to keep their cars safe from paint.

Final Thoughts: This was a super fun craft. I loved doing it. The only drawback is the mess it makes, but if you can control it I highly recommend it. (Editor’s Note: If you have a grassy, outdoors space available, I recommend doing it outside – weather permitting – and in the grass. The grass will get mowed, the paint gets cleaned up, and the mess is less of an issue. This isn’t feasible at all libraries, but if you can make it work it’s a good painting space.)

The following are tiles from the teens of the White Oak Library District and my foot.

Filed under: Teen Programming