I pulled out a book for my kids that we got a long time ago but hadn’t looked at much. The books is The Usborne Book of Famous Artists. I thought we could read about an artist then do some art. The first artist in the book is Giotto Di Bondone. You may or may not have heard of him. He lived almost 700 years ago. He painted mostly religious works and mostly on walls of churches. When we looked up some more information about him online, we learned that he did several versions of the nativity.

No.18 Scenes from the Life of Christ–Adoration of the Magi

I had the kids each paint their own version of the nativity.

“The Big Light” by Ninja Boy

“Family” by My Princess

“Paint” by Miss Tickles

While they were painting, I realized that I wanted to paint too! I don’t usually do much with paint. I haven’t ventured into that medium very often other than the gelli plate. As I sat down and started painting, the kids were fascinated with my use of the paint brush. They were used to using the paintbrush much like you would a pencil or marker. I swirled the brush around with wispy movements, and they decided they wanted to try that too! Ninja Boy did a few strokes on my page then let me finish it. They decided I should make a snowy scene rather than a Nativity.

“Winter Birds” by Melinda

I also talked to them about how you can add layers to your painting by doing a background first then allowing the paint to dry before you add more on top. My Princess tried that with her next painting (we cheated a little and used a hair dryer to speed the process up a little).

If you have kids, try sitting down to paint with them next time. You can learn something and maybe they can too. If you don’t have kids, maybe you should try painting anyway! You don’t have to get anything fancy, just practice with a brush, paint, and a piece of paper.