By Georgie Doherty
Yellow and red make orange! White and red make pink! Creative kids love the sensory texture of paint on their finger tips. A simple finger tip can be used to decorate an entire tree, complete with beautiful autumn leaves or blossom. It is also a wonderful activity to preserve your child’s fingerprints; we all know they grow up so fast!
This Fingerprint Tree activity will encourage your child to learn about nature and the environment, while promoting aesthetic awareness and building important fine motor skills. Explore colour mixing, pattern, shape, and texture with your child as they learn about the seasons and create their own imaginative collection of trees for each.
You’ll need:
- Coloured A4 Art Paper
- Oil Pastels or Crayons
- Liquid Paint x 3 Colours
- Paper Towel
- Paper Plate
How to do it:
- Select two oil pastels for the tree, one dark and one light. I’m using grey and black. Draw a tree on the coloured paper with the lighter oil pastel.
- Draw wiggly line details with the darker oil pastel over the top. This will create bark texture.
- Choose a winter, spring, summer or autumn tree to create. Select three harmonious colours of liquid paint to use for the tree leaves. Squirt each paint colour on a paper plate, the size of a 20 cent coin.
- Starting with the darkest colour, use your finger to dab paint over the bottom branches to create leaves.
- As you work your way up the tree switch to your medium colour, then your lightest colour to create fingerprint leaves. Look at the way the colours mix on the page. You can also experiment
- Continue to create a tree for each season; summer, autumn, winter and spring.
For the full Fingerprint Tree video tutorial visit www.artwithgeorgie.com/fingerprinttree
Georgie Doherty is a qualified art teacher, educator and mum based on the Mornington Peninsula. She is the founder of Art With Georgie, an Online Art Club helping families foster creativity in their home through fun, engaging online art lessons for kids. Art With Georgie also offers children’s school holiday art camps, term art classes and creative activities for birthday parties. Georgie is also mum to Eve, a one in a million baby who was born with a rare genetic condition called Interstitial Lung Disease and severe Pulmonary Hypertension. She is an advocate for lung research and awareness, hoping to inspire others with her story and journey into motherhood.