So we made it through our first week of home school and on to the weekend. The question was how do we make a staying in all weekend feel different to a staying in all week?

Arty Sunday afternoons

Well obviously home school was out but rather than just sitting around all day we decided to get arty. The kids have made some art to decorate their walls. After all they are going to be spending quite a bit of time looking at them! First up was this silhouette art.

If you look through my previous posts you might notice that Harry Potter is a recurring theme, and it’s back again here as my daughter is a big fan. Whatever theme you choose you can make some fabulous pictures for your kids bedroom walls.

Find your silhouettes

We began by finding some images online of silhouettes or outlines that would be easy to cut out. This was a Harry Potter themed picture, so we found some pictures of Hogwarts, Dobby, the Deathly Hallows symbol and the platform 9 3/4 sign. I printed them off and cut out each image.

My daughter asked for art supplies at Christmas so had some blank canvases which we used here. You can do this onto canvas, canvas boards or card – whatever you have access to.

Choose your paints

We did some tests before we began with different paints. Unsurprisingly, we found water colours were too watery. We were worried they would bleed and blur the edges of our silhouette. Having tried a few options, we settled on using acrylics, but you could use poster paints instead.

We took each cut-out in turn and carefully stuck it to the canvas with pieces of bluetac. Then we used a sponge to dab the paint onto the canvas, over the edge of the silhouette. Using thicker paint such as acrylic or poster paints means they are less likely to run or bleed under the outline of your image. As we moved further away from the edge we mixed the paint with a tiny bit of water to blend out the edges slightly.

Our canvas has several images on to make a Harry Potter montage, but it would also look great as one single silhouette. You could use a single silhouette shape and then apply the paint to the whole of the rest of the canvas.

Leave it to dry

The finished piece took very little time to dry as the paint was not watered down. Once the paint was completely dry we peeled off the shapes and the picture was done.

Your art is complete!

An easy silhouette art canvas. Painted, finished and hanging on the wall all in the space of an afternoon.

Have you tried this technique? What images did you use to make your picture?