A Craft of a Fresco for Kids
- Choose a sturdy canvas, such as heavy card stock, a painter's canvas or wood panel. Cover a flat work surface with newspaper or a sheet of plastic to protect it. Set up a textured tempera medium, pencils or colored pencils, a tray of water color paints, paintbrushes and a shallow tray of water.
- Sketch some ideas for the painting with pencil or colored pencil directly on the canvas. Load a wide, flat paintbrush with textured tempera medium. Apply the medium to the entire canvas, creating texture with the medium by using choppy and uneven brush strokes. Create more texture by pressing items, such as a plastic comb, a stainless steel sponge or a crumpled piece of cloth into the surface of the tempera medium. Allow the medium to air dry slightly for 30 minutes.
- Load a paintbrush with water and use the brush to moisten one of the water color paints. Paint directly onto the layer of textured tempera medium on the canvas. The medium should still be moist at this point and will absorb some of the color and create a glowing effect to solid blocks of color. When the painting is finished, allow the canvas to dry for about 12 hours before handling it.
- Rinse paintbrushes when switching from one color to another; replace the water in the tray each time it starts to become muddy. Paints may bleed together slightly through the fresh tempera medium. To avoid this, allow one color to dry before adding another color next to or on top of it. Soak up paint mistakes from the canvas with a clean piece of paper towel.