Finger Painting (1949)

offers a whole new world of interesting and fantastic shapes the adventure of creating interesting patterns with arms fists knuckles and thumbs is a satisfying experience for any age you can buy finger paint or it can be made by using dry tempura color soap and starch to one cup of starch add a small quantity of water and stir to prevent lumping to this add 5 cups of water and heat the mixture for about 10 minutes or until it becomes fairly stir into the mixture one cup of soap flakes this will make the paint washable in case of stains on clothing and will cause it to slip easily on the paper used tempera or jam jars make good containers and this amount of paste is sufficient to fill eight of these place a heaping tablespoon full of color in each jar add the paste and stir well tongue depressors which the nurse uses make good stirring spoons who can say what new and ingenious designs may spring from these jars of brightly colored paint here are three children about to adventure into the realm of finger-painting Donald ties on a newspaper apron to protect his clothing Mary is dipping the special type of paper in water to make the surface more workable bob is finger-painting for the first time he carefully smoothes out all the wrinkles and choosing a bright color which will contrast well with the white sheet spread it out evenly with the palm of his hand he doesn't worry about going over the edges or there is an oilcloth under the paper Bob experiments to learn what effect he can get with the various parts of his hand he tries the side of his hand the flat of his hand is this his thumb the side of his thumb and his fingertips Mary prefers to put her background colors on with a brush to the red color she adds blue to work some color into her design she dips her hand into the green paint as she begins mary has painted like this many times she knows that in finger painting she allows the design to grow and swirl as one jeep suggest another she doesn't try to imitate what she sees around her her work sparkles because she allows the white of the paper to Shifu when she's satisfied Mary knows that she must stop to keep on would spoil a design Don is planning to use his finger painting as book jackets so he chooses darker colors which will not show the dirt there are many ways in which Don can create new and different effects perhaps he will use a special wooden or a cardboard calm or maybe his background will be worked out this way using crumpled paper book covers and pictures are the tangible results of finger-painting intangible but more important is the excitement you feel as the rich color flows into designs like these from your creative hands