Bubble Painting Process Art

All month, Messy Little Monster is hosting a fun painting techniques challenge – taking a look at 35 different processes that can be used to have a fun and creative time with paint.

We made some bubble paint and used it for a bubble painting process art activity using bubble guns. The boys loved this! It’s definitely one of their favourite activities that we’ve done recently. It was really simple to set up, and surprisingly low on mess too.

 

To set up this activity you will need:

• Watercolour paper (because the paint has a high proportion of liquid regular paper gets soaked through too quickly, but watercolour paper worked perfectly). We used this brand.
• Bubble liquid – either use ready made shop bought, your own favourite bubble mixture recipe, or just dish soap / washing up liquid which also works fine for this.
• Liquid watercolours. We use this brand. If you can’t get hold of liquid watercolours, then try substituting with food colouring but be aware that liquid water colours are washable and food colouring is not and may stain clothes, hands or the area where you’re working so in the garden might be best if using that option
• Bubble shooters / Bubble guns : Something like these

How to make the bubble paint

Take your bubble liquid, if you have small containers like the ones shown above then you can make the paint directly in each pot – using one container per colour. If using washing up liquid / dish soap or you need to split up a large container, then put equal portions into small bowls.

Add drops of liquid water colour paint directly into your bubble mixture. You will need about 10-20 drops for the small container shown above. The more you add, the darker the colour. Once added, mix with a wooden skewer or stick.

We made red, green and blue.

Each colour will look something like this – very liquid, with a strong colour and some bubbles.

 And you’re done. Ready to start painting!

Using bubble guns rather than bubble wands makes it a lot easier to aim your bubbles directly at the page, as you can see. When each bubble pops onto the paper, it will leave a coloured print which gives a really cool effect, and was really fun for the kids to experiment with.

They LOVED this process, as you can see from the pictures. The bubbles and paint combination was definitely a hit!

I’ve included quite a few pictures since they tell the story much better than words with this type of activity!

 

Our end results looked pretty effective with all the bubble prints, circles and pretty water colour shades! I love the patterns made by the really round bubbles. Some of the other marks are drip marks where they dripped and dropped a bit of the bubble mixture as they painted, or little splatters from bubbles popping which all adds to the effect.

These bubble print artworks would make great home made wrapping paper for small gifts.

We’ll definitely return to this activity again, and maybe experiment with some different colours.

If you want to follow along with the rest of the process art challenge, here’s the list of all the painting activities. I’m really looking forward to see all of the activities that are shared – this type of creative process based painting is so valuable for children.

You might also like some of our other painting process art posts:

• Potato Masher Painting with Kids
• Bubble Wrap Print Painting
• Paint Absorption Process Art
• Homemade Hand Print and Cookie Cutter Print Wrapping Paper
• Shiny Starry Night Mirror Painting
• Star and Crescent Sponge Printing