Painting with my Brownies

Submitted by Paula Riggins

I was so excited to do the Painting badge with the girls since I really enjoy going to those new paint and sip classes around town.  I started by searching for amateur paint channels on YouTube, there are tons to choose from.  I settled on a birch tree painting because it had so many interesting steps, would work with two different kinds of paint and used brushes as well as a household object.  I went cheap with the watercolors but used nice painting paper.  I wish I would have just gotten canvas because our main project turned out so nice.

Before our first scout meeting,  I added water to the watercolors so it was already softening up when the girls were ready to paint and asked girls to bring paint shirts.  The first step in our painting was to use masking tape to blank out the spaces that would be later be tree trunks.  The tape goes off the top of the page but ends before the bottom at heights varying an inch or two.  Make sure you tear and not use scissors for the right look, then lightly draw a line in pencil with one third of the page below and two thirds above the line.

At that point, we discussed colors and how they make you feel.  I showed the girls how to paint the sky with horizontal lines and talked about how the colors would show the moods or the weather. Dark colors for an angry storm or bright yellows and pinks for brighter happier moods. The girls then painted the top two thirds of the page right over the tape. A few got a so excited they painted the entire sheet, which was fine.  I pointed out how the watercolors blended into each other unlike other kinds of paint.  We drug our brushes through the colors watching them change and blend.  That was about as far as we got on night one but we did accomplish requirement #3.  This also gave our watercolors a chance to dry before we continued to the next steps.

I kept the paint shirts and in the second meeting,  I brought in acrylic paints to use on the bottom third of their painting to look like the grass or dirt.  One scout even made theirs look like a sandy beach.  I asked them to notice how the acrylic paint didn’t blend and flow like the watercolors did.  Since I wanted the background to dry before we moved on to the next step we set this paintings aside and spent the rest of our meeting letting the girls paint something they saw in the room.  We counted this as a still life or a sister scout portrait for requirement #2.  They could have spent the entire hour happily free painting.

In the third meeting,  I showed the girls how to remove the tape and reveal the clean unpainted white strips of tree trunks below then how to paint the trunks by using old business cards (requirement #4).  They basically dipped the long edge in black paint and scrape it across the white trunks to look like birch bark.  The technique is a little tricky so I let them practice on scrap paper.  One other tip I would give if you are doing the masking tape project is to buy blue painters tape for easy peeling.  We had issues with the masking tape sticking after three weeks and tearing the paper.  So this step took a little longer than expected.  Luckily, I had several moms to help.

For the mural requirement #5,  I did something a little different.  Have you ever seen those videos where someone is explaining a point and doodle on a white board then erase and draw again to illustrate their points?  Well I did that as we happened to be working on the Water of Water Journey around that time.  Except instead of me doodling I would let the girls answer questions and add something to our mural.  For example I would paint a heart on the page and ask the girls what they loved about water.  The first girl might say swimming so I would hand her a brush and say “Yes paint us a swimming pool”.  The second girl might say water balloons to which I would reply “Awesome paint some water balloons” and hand her a second brush.  I had to remind them to make something quick and only allowed 2 brushes at a time to keep us moving.  But the method kept my girls interested as we talked through several parts of the journey.   It would have been a great decoration for our Rededication Day too if I could have gotten it home to dry in one piece. OOPS!  In hind sight, I wish I would have created it on 3-4 poster boards and just hung together to make a mural. Oh well lesson learned and requirement accomplished even if I couldn’t reuse as a decoration later!

For the last requirement also #1,  I invited a friend my husband met at art school to show us some of his creations.  Hint… Hint… Local art school would be a great resource to find an artist for your troop in case you didn’t marry one yourself.  Oh and make sure you take lots of pictures so you can shower your artist with Thank You messages on their facebook or web page later.   They really love that.

My brownies loved the Painting Badge and I think yours will too.  Good luck and most of all have fun with your brownies cause in a blink of an eye they will be bridging on to all new adventures!