Discover Art for the Summer Holidays! Fun Art Ideas for Kids with St Mawes Gallery

For many families around the UK, six weeks of school-free fun recently began. If you're already discovering that finding something inspiring and entertaining to fill the whole break isn’t always easy, it's time to turn to art for something a little more relaxed, less expensive and not dependent on the weather!

Art is a subject that children love, no matter what age. Toddlers and teenagers alike can find joy in creating or observing something beautiful. Here are just a few art-y ways to get your children away from their screens, vanquish boredom and get their imagination whirring...

Visit an Art Gallery

Visiting a gallery for the first time is an amazing experience. Many galleries are free to get in to and have exhibitions that cater for all ages, tastes and attention spans. And while spending an afternoon in a gallery is an event in itself, it can spur activities for days afterwards too. If your child takes a shine to a specific painting let them research the artist online and find out about them and their work.

Try to talk to them about the piece they particularly liked and find out what it was that drew them to it. You could then even encourage them to recreate it in their own way, using inexpensive mediums such as poster paint or colouring pencils. Finally, get them to make their own picture adopting the style of their chosen artist. Creating a Picasso themed portrait of the family dog or an Andy Warhol style picture of their teacher would be an afternoon well spent.

Our own St Mawes Gallery has many artists from various backgrounds with a widespread
variety of styles, each as inspiring as the next.

A New Medium

Children generally love anything out of the ordinary, so if yours are used to painting on paper, try letting them paint rocks for a change! This always seems to please.

Find a nice smooth rock in the park or on one of the many beautiful Cornish beaches we have nearby and let them decorate it with anything they can think of. This could be a tiny landscape scene, repeating geometric shapes, a self-portrait or, for younger ones, perhaps an abstract Jackson Pollock style creation.

Once dried, create a rockery gallery in the garden or on the front porch or even go one step further and return the rock to the park or beach for someone else to find and brighten up their day!

Scavenge and Create!

St Mawes Gallery houses work by outstanding painters such as Chloe Elliott and Alan Stratford, but it is also home to stunning sculptures by Richard Holliday, David Meredith and Lawrence Murley.

‘Found objects’ collages are a great way to introduce children to 3D art get them thinking about a project for a few days before they actually create it. Find inspiration from our very own Alvaro Tamarit!

Give them a shoe box or egg carton and let them collect little treasures. These can be literally anything. Leaves from the garden, buttons, barbie shoes, scraps of paper, ribbons, flowers, small animal shaped plastic toys, photographs from the newspaper, shells from a visit to the beach, whatever they find interesting or beautiful and sparks their imagination.

Once they feel their collection is complete, they can decorate their shoe box or egg carton with paint, scraps of wrapping or decoupage paper and washi tape then set them off to glue in their found objects any way they like. Finishing it off with pom-poms and glitter always goes
down a treat.

Paint a Rockery

Children love anything out of the ordinary. As they are used to painting on paper, letting them paint rocks always seems to please!

Find a nice smooth rock in the park or on the beach (or in a garden centre!) and let them decorate it with anything they can think of from a tiny landscape scene, repeating geometric shapes, a self-portrait or, for younger ones, perhaps an abstract Jackson Pollock style creation.

Once dried create a rockery gallery in the garden or on the front porch or even go one step further and return the rock to the park or beach for someone else to find and brighten up their day!

The summer holiday is the perfect time to open your child’s eyes to art and give them time and
space to build a relationship with creativity that could last a lifetime.