Celebrate World Art Day at home with these 5 family art projects

Every 15th April, we celebrate World Art Day to remind ourselves how much the world needs art to thrive and heal. Art brings us closer together because it gives us a space to be at peace, at our happiest, and at our most honest. 

Most importantly, art helps us build a sense of identity — whether through the art we create or that we simply enjoy and appreciate. Each of us has our own interpretation of what art means to us. We’re influenced by the experiences we’ve lived, the communities we’re a part of, and the people we love. This breadth of interpretation makes art play such an important role in sharing knowledge and encouraging open dialogue. 

Art is a reflection of what we find beautiful and necessary. It’s drawing, painting, singing, rapping, dancing, sculpting, writing, photography, sewing, digital creation, and everything in between. It’s anything that we want it to be. 

Sharing the values of art and play from a young age helps instill more than just creativity. It builds collaboration, promotes respect, and gives children a safe place to express their emotions. 

This World Art Day, let’s dedicate some time to creating art with our families and friends at home. Here are five easy activities that you can do to get the ball rolling: 

Fill a giant flower vase

(Source: weareteachers.com)

Materials

• Poster paper or large cardstock

• A few pieces of colored paper or white paper for each person

• Coloring supplies of your choice (crayons, markers, colored pencils, paint)

• Glue 

• Scissors 

Step 1: Draw a large vase on the poster paper or large cardstock

Step 2:  Have each person create a flower or several flowers from colored or white paper. Have fun with it and draw flowers of all shapes, sizes, and colors!

Step 3: Have everyone come together to stick their flowers on the poster paper or cardstock so it looks like you’re all filling up the vase together.

Interactive heart mandalas

(Source: artfulparent.com)

When creating this art mandala, you’ll engage with children in a back-and-forth drawing activity. This is a really great for parents and caretakers to be present, start conversations, or to just laugh and have fun together. All you need for this is a piece of paper and drawing or coloring supplies of your choice!

Step 1: One person starts by drawing a small heart in the middle of the page.

Step 2: The second person draws a bigger heart around the smaller heart, creating another layer to the drawing. Draw the layer in with unique design elements and colors — the differences between the layers is what makes heart mandalas so beautiful!

Step 3: Continue back and forth until everyone has decided that the heart is complete. 

Draw a comic strip

(Source: rediscoveredfamilies.com)

Image source: tinybeans.com

On top of being an exciting activity to boost creativity, comic strips are also a great way to improve storytelling, communication, and even writing skills! All you need to put your comic books together is paper, a pencil, a ruler, an eraser, and coloring supplies.

Family and friends can come together to create their own comic books and make it a memorable gift to each other at the end of the session! You can also create a fun storyboard together and tag team each element of the comic strip. 

Step 1: Create a story for your comic strip! Try and find a strong starting point for your comic, an exciting build-up to the story, and a perfect ending.

Step 2: Draw your comic panels. These come in all sorts of styles, here are a few examples that you can customize on Canva. 

Step 3: Draw your comic! Use a pencil so you can easily erase mistakes and start over if needed. 

Step 4: Write down speech and text in the speech bubbles. Do a Google search of children’s comic books as a source of inspiration on how to write concise and expressive dialogue.

Step 5: Go over the drawings with a black marker. Color your comic strip in if you’d like!

Fingerprint aquarium

(Activity source: funhandprintartblog.com)

Image source: rufflesandrainboots.com

Fingerprint art is one of the easiest things you can do at home. Since all you need is paint and your fingers, this is something everyone in the family can get involved with without much prep at all! In this art activity, you’ll be turning all your fingerprints into little underwater creatures that you and your children would want to see in an aquarium. 

Materials

• White or blue colored paper

• Paint

• Cloth or paper towels

Step 1: Use a piece of paper to represent your aquarium. You can use blue coloring supplies to have a white piece of paper look like water, or you can use a blue colored paper too. 

Step 2: Dip your finger into the paint. Here’s a tip: Make sure that the pain isn’t too watery so it’s easier for you to keep a vivid color and maintain the shape of your print. 

Step 3: Clean your finger with a cloth or paper towel and repeat the previous step again with different colors. 

Step 4: When the paint is dried, use a paint to draw over each print so they look like the underwater creatures you’ve chosen. You can use the picture above as an example!

The combination man

(Activity inspired by: artfulparent.com)

The combination man (also called the exquisite corpse game) is an art activity that’s sure to create lots of laughter. In this activity, you get to draw out characters of your choosing — they could be fictional people, real-life people, animals, anything at all! At the end of this activity, you’ll get a piece of art that operates like a little flip book.

Turning over each flap of paper mixes your characters up, creating new ones born out of unusual combinations of your drawings! 

Step 1: Fold a piece of paper into three sections.

Step 2: Cut the first and last section into equal thirds so you get three flaps of paper on each side.

Step 3: Draw a character in the middle section of the paper. The head of your character should be lined up with the first flap, the body with the second flap, and the lower body with the third flap. 

Step 4: Fold each flap inwards and draw out a different section of a new character — you’ll probably already see some interesting combinations popping up here!

Step 5: Mix and match your drawings up!

Which activity are you going to try out?

We want to appreciate all your artwork this World Art Day! Take pictures of your creations and tag us on Instagram @mygoodbrain with the hashtag #MGBartday 🎨

We’re so excited to see it!