Color Mixing Grids

A fun way to explore color mixing. Color mixing activities never get old and in simple art activities for kids, color mixing fun can be introduced in multiple ways. Today we share a beautiful art activity with a dose of color mixing. { Check out our color mixing tic-tac-toe game} Materials

• Liquid Watercolors
• Heavy Paper**/ Watercolor Paper**
• Brushes

Draw grids (3*3) on watercolor paper or any heavy paper like card stock. Set our vibrant liquid water colors and good quality brushes. I can’t get enough of our gorgeous liquid water colors { access all our liquid watercolor art activities here}

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This art activity is possibly a bit structured and will be suitable for the 4+ crowd. While it is more involved it is just as fun as all the other open ended art activities for kids we share here on the blog.

On a heavy paper, she started painting the grids by making her primary colors pattern. Alternatively you can just provide plain paper and have them simply draw rows and columns with primary colors. This is a simple way to talk about colors, primary and secondary colors { Access all our color activities here}

Those liquid watercolors, I got to tell you are beyond gorgeous. We recently purchased another brand and I have to say I’m torn. We loved our previous brand , Sargent Liquid Watercolors . But these Sax Liquid Watercolors ones give me more bang for my buck!

Once the paper is filled with primary colors in either rows { or columns}, continue with the same primary colors in the same order only you will paint them columns (or rows). So in our case, the next step was to draw rows of the same primary colors in the same order. While doing the second set, you can either create the secondary colors by one sweeping stroke of the brush or start mixing the colors inside the boxes - one box at a time.

Here we are making purple by going horizontally.

Here we are making green and orange by sweeping the yellow trough the paper ( vertically)

On a couple of instances we tried letting the colors dry for a bit before painting across and mixing the colors. The effect was different. But the best effect is when you mix the colors when they are still wet on the paper.

We also tried color mixing while doing vertical sweeping motions. As the brush traveled through the primary colors, you can see it make the secondary colors in each box. With a gorgeous watercolor brush loaded with red liquid water colors, as soon we started the vertical strokes, you can see the orange color on the top box (1.2) and purple in the bottom box(3,2)

We also tried different colors and did not just stick to RBY. Here is our attempt with magenta, turquoise and orange. My photography “skills” totally failed me here but the magenta+ orange is beyond beautiful!

Our completed color mixing grid.

Another simple idea to make creation time more challenging and interesting. Plan the grid ahead of time and write the names of the colors hence formed with wax crayons. Then invite your child to try to create those colors by following the grid. The color names will show through the water colors.

Thanks for reading

More Art activities for kids on our category page

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