"Snow and Ice" Salt Paintings

The recent bout of snowy and icy weather we have been experiencing lately has been fascinating for the boys as they experience their first ever winter in the UK.  I thought it would be great to capture the different textures and colours of the season through some artwork using a technique called salt painting.

Ideally a salt painting is made by sprinkling salt onto a watercolour painting whilst the painting is still wet.  The water from the paint absorbs the salt and sticks it to the painting.  (In our case, I misread the watercolour paint chart and accidentally purchased white watercolour paint instead of  blue!) I improvised by watering down regular blue Crayola paint which seemed to work just as well.

I set out the watercolour paper on the table and let the boys paint for a couple of minutes.  Whilst their paintings were still wet, I presented them with two small bottles: one containing fine salt and the other containing coarse salt.  After sprinkling salt on his picture, Dooey was pretty much done.  Wugs wanted to continue, so I brought out the white watercolour paint (that I accidentally purchased) and he happily painted away talking about "snow" and "wind" as he did it.  Later both boys added a sprinkle of glitter which created a nice effect.  

What we used:

Watercolour Paper

Blue Crayola Paint (watered down) (Blue watercolour paint may have been better)

White watercolour paint

Fine and coarse salt

Silver glitter