We love trying out new fun art ideas and water pistol painting is definitely near the top of our list. Take a look at all our other outdoor art ideas for kids.
Some of our favourite art activities have been ice painting, painting on foil and using homemade bath paints. You must give them a try!
If you and your little one love this painting idea then you are sure to love the painting ideas in our book - Fun Painting Projects for Kids.
Below you will find step-by-step instructions for making a fabulous piece of canvas artwork using the water gun painting technique. Painting with squirt guns is fun to do with one child or a whole group! How much fun would it be to do some water gun painting on a playdate or as part of a class project?
If you are looking for other painting ideas that you can create on a canvas then check out our list of easy canvas painting ideas.
If you are looking to extend this water pistol painting activity check out their squirt gun tie dye t-shirts, it looks soooo much fun!
What is the best paint to use for water gun painting?
You can use watered-down liquid watercolour or watered-down washable paints for water gun painting. We decided to go for some washable poster paint. You will need to water the paint down so that it is about 50% paint and 50% water. You want the paint to be a good consistency so that it is easy to squirt with it, but you don't want to water it down too much or the paint colours won't be as bright when then dry.
Supplies for water gun painting
- Poster paint
- Water
- Water pistols (one for each colour)
- A large canvas
Water Pistol Painting
STEP 1: Get your supplies for water gun painting ready
Before heading outdoors with the kids to start painting make sure that you are prepared. When doing fun outdoor art activities like this I like to have everything ready and set up so that when the kids come out they can begin the fun straight away!
Make sure that you have one water pistol for each colour paint that you would like to use. We only had two water pistols so we were limited to 2 colours, but if you have more you could use a whole rainbow of colours!
I personally do like to limit the colours used when we do our artwork though as I hate it when all the colours merge together and we end up with everything being brown!
Whilst squirt gun painting is more about the process than the final piece of artwork you can create some stunning artwork using this technique.
STEP 2: Fill your water pistols with paint
Preparing the squirt guns for this water pistol painting activity is easy, but it does take a while to set it up. Water down your chosen paint colour and pour it into the water pistol. If using poster paints I would recommend using 50% paint and 50 % water so that the paint is easy to squirt but still a nice bright colour. If you follow these ratios you will end up with a good paint consistency and bright colours like in the images below. If using liquid watercolour paint I wouldn't water it down too much if you want to keep the nice bright colours liquid watercolours can produce.
STEP 3: Water gun painting on canvas
Once your water pistols are full of paint take them outside, prop up a large canvas and get squirting! Harry (aged 4) was so excited to begin this squirt gun painting activity. He started off squirting the canvas with paint at close range and then moved back so that he ended up firing paint across the garden!
READY.........AIM...........FIRE!
You can see by Harry's face how much he enjoyed firing the paint filled water pistol. Not only the canvas ended up being painted though, we ended up with a few colourful plants too!
You can see by Harry's face how much he enjoyed firing the paint filled water pistol. Not only the canvas ended up being painted though, we ended up with a few colourful plants too!
Harry LOVED creating his unique piece of artwork and it looks great hanging up in the playroom.
Have fun experimenting with using different colour paints. We included this fun painting idea in our book - Fun Painting projects for Kids where we used blue, green and yellow paint.
We hope that you have had fun painting with this water pistol painting technique for kids. We totally love squirt gun painting and it is definitely one of our top 10 fun outdoor art activities for kids. See our other outdoor art ideas too! Water gun painting is a fun Summer art idea that works on fine motor skills for preschoolers and entertains kids of all ages so there is nothing not to love!
This looks like so much fun! I like the resulting artwork, too (which isn't always the case for process art, lol!)
ReplyDeletethank you. we have the canvas hanging in our playroom and it looks great.
DeleteWould you be able to use food coloring instead of paint?
ReplyDeleteI would think that would work, but you would need a lot of it. Liquid watercolours work too.
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