Playdough Paintings

Olive Harbutt, the daughter of of William Harbutt's (inventor of plasticine) was an inspirational plasticine painter. Her paintings would have made great plasticine paint by numbers kits. http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-your-own-Van-Gogh-paint-by-numbers-Pai/

One of my favourite book illustrators Barbara Reid also inspired this Playdough Painting class for children. Why not play dough I thought. Here's the result of a short session with mushy playdough. Even the mum's and dad's had a go. I kept the playdough in an uneven marbly state which added a rather nice subtle effect to the paintings.

Step 1 Recipe for Playdough Paintings

The playdough recipe used here was:
2 cups plain flour
2 cups water
1 tbl tartaric acid (kills bacteria and adds bounce)
2 tsp teatree oil / orange oil
1/2 cup salt
(For mushy playdough added 1/2 cup of water extra)

Comments

[mdeblasi1]

It sort of reminds me of encaustic, but w/o the luminescence. M

[Gomi Romi]

Thanks, I've never tried encaustic painting before, looks interesting - perhaps a coating of pva glue and water over dried playdough paintings will give a kind of shine to a picture. The playdough I mixed was so sticky that it got rather messy. No wonder the textural roughness to the paintings. Someone figured out that flattening the sticky mix with plastic wrapped helped remove the sticky mixture from our fingers.

[mdeblasi1]

You can try a little pseudo encaustic with a box of broken crayons. You must be careful, however, because paraffin is flammable. It suddenly is not a child's craft.

[Gomi Romi]

Thanks! for the tip

[Uncle Kudzu]

cool idea! scanning these creations might be another way of preserving them for the long-term. and i see the possibility for animated stop-motion "paintings" for perhaps older "kids" with this technique.

[ChrysN]

This looks like a fun project for kids! Do the paintings last or does it dry out?

[Gomi Romi]

The kids love it - the pictures will dry out to quite a solid state and the surface goes white and crusty. Perhaps pictures can be varnished with a bit of pva and water mix (after thoroughly drying through in the sun) to keep the colours bright. The teatree oil should keep it from growing mouldy and last quite a while. Quite heavy though!