Snowman Paintings
What would your family look like if they were snowmen?
Here are Soren’s most profound thoughts from today’s Bible time:
“The Bible can be kind of crazy but it is true.”
“What if everyone in the Bible were snowmen?”
Well, the first thought was fairly the profound but the second one just made us giggle. We no doubt can thank these Snowman Snow Globe paintings for the time we spent imaginging snowmen Isrealities crossing the Red Sea and trying to survive in the desert wilderness (would’ve they had their own personal flurries like Olaf?). Aside from the silly fun, there were three other reasons that this painting project from Step by Step Painting was a good one for us.
It required perseverance and patience.
A paint stroke gone wrong can quickly bring a young artist to the brink of despair. This project had its fair share of “oops” and “arghhh!” moments for my kiddos which gave us plenty of opportunity to practice our mantra: step back, take a deep breath, and make a plan. Are you going to start over, do a section over, or think the whole thing over?
It was a good exercise in following directions, but there was also plenty of room for creative touches and personalization.
In the painting above, do you see how the teenage Palmer snowman with his long skinny bottom snow circle just edges out the dad snowman to be the tallest in the family? That made us laugh. Notice the mistletoe Landon added over the snuggling Aunt Laura and Uncle Joe snow people in the photo below? That made us say “aww.” The fun was totally in the details.
When the paint had dried we had four beautiful paintings to give away (after I took pictures of course).
When we were in the planning stage we realized that we didn’t need five paintings of our family as snowmen so we decided to each do a different family and give the paintings as gifts. (I was elected to do our family because no one else wanted to paint seven snowmen!) During these COVID days, getting something in mail (I mean something not from Amazon), especially if it is filled with creativity, color, and cheer, can brighten the bleakest of days. Sharing artwork is a simple yet powerful way to connect. You take something blank, pour in some creative effort (and sometimes a few tears), and the end result is an artistic gift proudly displayed on a far way wall or fridge. And in the case of this project, you also get the giggles that come with questions like this: What would Grandpa look like as a snowman?...
If you want to paint your own snowman snow globe…
this link will take you to the tutorial. Just follow along!
A few notes about our paintings:
We did it over the course of a few days. We watched a little, painted a little until we were done.
We did not use the exact colors she recommends. We used what we had.
We did ours on multimedia art paper instead of canvas (easier to mail!) Mine was 11x14 (I had a lot of snowmen to fit in that globe!) but the kids used 9x12 paper. After they were dry we “smashed” them under heavy books for a day or so to flatten them out.
We scavenged for a good-sized circle to trace and ended up using a tupperware lid that seemed a good fit for our paper size. Use what you’ve got and it’ll work just fine!
We could not find any white chalk so we used white oil pastel. Crayon probably would have worked too.
The point to all these points--even when you follow a tutorial you don’t have to do it exactly the same way. Use what you’ve got and do what works for you. It is art; you are supposed to be creative!
