Move over Jackson Pollock, Miss Lily is in town.

Miss Lily had her art class this week and we had so much messy fun!The theme this week was a Jackson Pollock style painting. I absolutely adore how it turned out and am taking it to be framed so we can hang it in our living room. Isn't it stunning?
I really wish I had my camera during the process, so I could post more how to pictures, but I'll try and explain the process. The art teacher explained who Jackson Pollock was in a 30-second biography. Smart to keep it short since there was paint and cool stuff to play with in front of about 50 or so kids.

There were five stations set up: Drip, Splatter, Spray, Roll, and Smear. Each child was given a poster board sized piece of light weight cardboard and a slightly larger sized piece of white paper to keep messes on the cardboard. Which sort of worked.

Drip was a station with kiddie pools on the floor. The kids put their pieces of cardboard in the pool, grabbed a cup of paint with a sponge brush and dripped paint until their hearts were content.

Splatter was a cardboard box with paper on the floor and walls to protect against messes. The kids had these cool foam brushes in two sizes to throw paint on their canvas. This was a station where bystanders walked away with more paint on them than on the intended targets. Haha, We did this station first. I would say save this for one of the last, as all the cool splatter was eventually covered by the other stations.

Spray was another cardboard box and paper set up. Kids were given water guns with watered paint in them to spray paint. Guess which station was Lily's favorite? This could be an art project in of itself, and with towels on the floor, the mess was actually the smallest here.

Roll was a table filled with beads, foam stickers, fish rocks, and buttons. Jackson Pollock used to hide bits and pieces of things in his paintings, so that was the idea here.Kids could grab whatever and roll it around in the paint and stick it to their cardboard. Plastic gloves were given to kids to protect their hands, but wow, was this a mess. There was a lot of handprints in paint going on.

Smear was a station with pieces of sponge and paint. This station, along with Roll, was one of the stations where kids actually touched their art as they were working on it. If it was me, this is where I would start as it gives a colorful background to do some of the other stations on.

The mess this created was incredible, but it was so much fun and the kids were absolutely free to just play with the color and didn't have to worry about what was right versus wrong. I would caution that too much paint leads to a big brown mess, but we avoided that. It's a fantastic project. The paint used was all water based and kids were given garbage bags to wear over clothing, so no harm done. I think this would make a wonderful play date or birthday party activity, outside. I am not brave enough to have this inside.

Lily loved the water gun painting station, so we may set something like that up here at home. Jackson Pollock is a favorite artist of mine, so I may plan on joining her...

If you try this with your kids, I would love to see the results! Have some messy, colorful fun!

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