Top 8 'Impressionist-Inspired' Art Styles to try with Kids for Capturing Light in Your Own Backyard
The golden hour light filtering through the leaves, the dazzling reflection in a freshly formed puddle, the explosion of color in a single flower petal—our backyards are filled with fleeting moments of beauty. We see them, we appreciate them, but how often do we think about capturing them? Over a century ago, a group of revolutionary artists in Paris decided these moments of light and color were the most important subjects of all. They were the Impressionists.
They traded stuffy studios for the open air, perfect lines for energetic brushstrokes, and static scenes for the ever-changing dance of light. They showed the world that art wasn't just about recreating a perfect image, but about capturing a feeling, an impression. This philosophy is a perfect match for the boundless creativity and energy of children. It’s about process over perfection, seeing over simply looking.
So, let's grab some paints and head outside! Forget the pressure of creating a masterpiece. Instead, we’re going on an adventure to see our own backyards through the eyes of an artist. Here are eight wonderfully messy, incredibly fun, Impressionist-inspired art styles you can try with your kids to capture the magic of light right where you are.
1. Classic Dabs and Dashes (The Monet Method)
When you think of Impressionism, you probably picture the dreamy, dappled water lilies of Claude Monet. His secret was using short, distinct brushstrokes of color, letting them sit side-by-side rather than blending them smoothly. From a distance, these dabs and dashes merge in the viewer's eye to create a vibrant, shimmering image that feels alive with movement and light.
This technique is liberating for kids because it removes the pressure to draw perfectly. It’s all about color and energy! Encourage them to focus on the patches of light and shadow they see. Is the sunny spot on the grass pure green, or is it filled with flecks of yellow, white, and even orange? Are the shadows under the bush just dark, or are they made of cool blues, purples, and deep greens? This is the core of Impressionist observation.
Tips for your little Monet:
- Tools: Use stiff, short-bristled brushes, as they make creating distinct dabs easier. Cotton swabs or even the ends of small twigs also work wonderfully for creating textured marks.
- Technique: Show them how to load a brush with paint and press it onto the paper without dragging it. Encourage them to place different colors right next to each other. The real magic happens when you step back and see how the colors optically mix.
- Pro-Tip: Have your child squint their eyes while looking at their subject. This simple trick blurs out the tiny details and helps them see the general shapes of color and light, which is exactly what the Impressionists aimed to capture.
2. Perfectly Dotted Pointillism (A Nod to Seurat)
Get ready for some dotty fun! Pointillism, pioneered by Georges Seurat, is a mesmerizing technique where an entire picture is formed from tiny, individual dots of pure color. Up close, it's a field of dots. But from a distance, your brain mixes these dots to see a complete, luminous image. It’s like a low-fi version of how pixels on a screen work, making it a fascinating concept to introduce to kids.
This style is a fantastic lesson in patience and color theory. It teaches children how colors can influence each other. Placing yellow and blue dots next to each other creates a more vibrant green than one you'd mix on a palette. It’s a bit like a magic trick, and the big reveal when they step back from their work is always a moment of pure joy.
Tips for your little Seurat:
- Tools: Cotton swabs (Q-tips) are the ultimate pointillism tool for kids. The eraser end of a pencil, fingertips, or thin marker tips also work well.
- Get Started: Lightly sketch a very simple shape from your backyard—a single leaf, a rubber ball, or a piece of fruit. Then, start filling it in with dots of the main color.
- Shading with Dots: To create shadows, don’t use black! Instead, add dots of cool colors like blue and purple. For highlights where the sun hits, add dots of yellow and white. This simple exercise powerfully demonstrates how light is composed of different colors.
3. Thick and Textured Impasto (Van Gogh’s Passion)
If your child loves the sensory experience of squishing and smearing, they will adore impasto. This technique, famously used by Vincent van Gogh in his swirling, energetic paintings, involves applying paint so thickly that it stands out from the surface. The brushstrokes (or palette knife marks) are clearly visible, creating texture that you can almost feel with your eyes.
Impasto is all about capturing emotion and energy. It allows kids to engage with the paint as a sculptural material, not just a color. The thick texture is perfect for representing the rough bark of a tree, the fluffy softness of a cloud, or the wild petals of a sunflower. It turns a painting into a multi-sensory experience.
Tips for your little Van Gogh:
- Thicken Your Paint: Use acrylic or tempera paint straight from the tube. To make it even thicker and more textured, you can mix in a bit of flour, fine sand, or craft-grade texture gel.
- Application Tools: This is the time to put away the fine brushes. Let kids use craft sticks, old plastic gift cards, palette knives, or even their fingers to slather and sculpt the paint onto a sturdy surface like cardboard or a canvas board.
- Focus on Texture: Encourage them to paint things with interesting surfaces. How can they use the paint to show the bumpy texture of a stone wall or the smooth, waxy surface of a leaf?
4. Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Blurs (Turner's Atmosphere)
The Impressionists were deeply influenced by artists like J.M.W. Turner, who masterfully captured hazy, light-filled skies and seas. A fantastic way to recreate this atmospheric effect is with the "wet-on-wet" watercolor technique. It involves applying watercolor paint onto paper that has already been dampened with clean water. The result is a beautiful, soft bleed where colors flow into one another.
This method is perfect for capturing less defined subjects in your backyard: the soft glow of a sunset, morning mist rising from the grass, or the blurry reflection in a birdbath. It teaches kids to let go of control and embrace happy accidents, watching as the water and pigments work their magic together.
Tips for atmospheric painting:
- The Setup: You’ll need watercolor paper, which is thick enough to handle the water without buckling too much. Use a large brush or a spray bottle to wet the entire surface of the paper with clean water. You want it gleaming but not puddled.
- Add Color: Have your child touch their wet, color-filled brush to the damp paper. They can watch in awe as the color explodes and blooms across the page. Encourage them to drop in different colors and see how they mingle.
- Texture Trick: For a little extra magic, sprinkle a pinch of table salt onto the wet paint. As the paint dries, the salt crystals will absorb the water, creating stunning, starburst-like textures.
5. Broken Color with Pastels (Inspired by Degas)
Edgar Degas was a master of pastels, using them to create layers of vibrant, unblended color. This is often called "broken color," where strokes of different hues are placed side-by-side to create a shimmering, lively effect. Instead of coloring a leaf with a single flat green, a child can use strokes of light green, dark green, yellow, and even blue.
Oil pastels or chalk pastels are perfect for this, as they are tactile and offer brilliant, immediate color. This technique is an excellent way to teach children that objects are made up of many different colors, a key insight that artists like Goh Ling Yong often emphasize in their own work. It’s a huge step in learning to truly see the world around you.
Tips for pastel play:
- Layering: Show kids how to layer colors without pressing too hard at first. They can build up the color in an area by adding strokes of different hues on top of each other.
- Use the Whole Pastel: Teach them to use the tip of the pastel for thin lines and the side for broad patches of color. This helps create variety in their marks.
- Try Dark Paper: Using broken color on black or dark blue construction paper can produce dramatic results, as the bright pastel colors will pop right off the page, mimicking the effect of bright light against shadow.
6. Spontaneous Finger Painting (An Alla Prima Approach)
Alla prima is an Italian term meaning "at first attempt." It describes a painting that is completed in one single, spontaneous session, often with wet paint being applied on top of other wet paint. We can adapt this spirit of immediacy with a classic kid's activity: finger painting! It’s direct, sensory, and all about capturing the energy of a moment without overthinking.
This is less about a specific Impressionist painter and more about embracing their philosophy of capturing a fleeting impression quickly and directly. There is no tool more direct than our own fingers. It connects the child physically to their creation and helps them focus on broad shapes and feelings rather than tiny details.
Tips for direct painting:
- The Challenge: Have your child closely observe something in the backyard for just one minute—a bee buzzing around a flower, the wind making leaves dance. Then, have them turn to their paper and paint the feeling and movement of what they saw from memory.
- Technique: Encourage them to use different parts of their hands. Fingertips for dots, thumbs for broad smudges, and the side of the hand for sweeping gestures.
- Focus on Energy: This isn’t about making a perfect picture of a bee. It’s about creating buzzing marks, sunny yellow splotches, and swirling green lines that convey the energy of that moment.
7. Scumbling with Sponges for Foliage and Light
Scumbling is a painting technique where a thin, broken layer of paint is applied over another color, creating a textured, hazy effect. It's perfect for things like foliage, dappled light, or clouds. For kids, we can achieve this same effect easily and effectively using sponges.
This is a fantastic way to build up layers and texture in a painting. A child can paint a dark green background for a bush, then use a sponge to dab lighter greens and yellows on top, perfectly recreating the way sunlight hits the outer leaves. It’s a simple technique with a surprisingly professional-looking result. As I've explored in my own work, which you can see throughout Goh Ling Yong's blog, building layers is key to creating depth.
Tips for sponge scumbling:
- Make Your Tools: Cut up a few household sponges into different sizes and shapes. Natural sea sponges also create wonderful, irregular patterns.
- The Method: Dip a slightly damp sponge into some paint, then dab most of it off onto a scrap piece of paper or a paper plate. You want the sponge to be almost dry. Then, lightly dab or scrub the sponge onto the painting to apply a delicate, textured layer of color.
- Build It Up: Start with darker colors and build up to lighter ones. This is great for painting a leafy tree: start with a dark green base, then scumble on a medium green, and finish with just a few dabs of yellow-green for the sunlit highlights.
8. Capturing Reflections with Mixed Media
The Impressionists were obsessed with water. They painted rivers, lakes, and oceans, endlessly fascinated by the way light and color broke apart and danced on the surface. You can bring this fascination to your backyard with a fun mixed-media project that explores reflections in a puddle, a bucket of water, or a shiny gazing ball.
This project combines the magic of wax-resist art with the principles of Impressionist observation. It teaches kids to look for the "upside-down world" in reflective surfaces and to notice how colors become distorted and broken up in the water.
Tips for reflective art:
- The Materials: You’ll need a dark piece of paper (blue or black works best), oil pastels, and watercolors.
- The Process: First, have your child use the oil pastels to draw the reflection they see on their dark paper. This could be white and yellow squiggles for the sky, and green and brown lines for upside-down trees. Encourage them to use short, dash-like marks.
- The Reveal: Once they’re done with the pastels, have them paint over the entire paper with blue or purple watercolor. The paint will be resisted by the waxy pastels, and the drawing of the reflection will magically appear, shimmering through the "water."
The true beauty of Impressionism isn't just in the finished paintings, but in the revolutionary act of seeing the world differently. It’s about finding art in the everyday, celebrating imperfection, and falling in love with the fleeting beauty of light. Your backyard isn't just a place to play; it's a dynamic, ever-changing art studio waiting to be discovered.
So go ahead, get a little messy, and make some beautiful impressions. You’ll be doing more than just creating art; you’ll be teaching your children to look at their world with wonder, curiosity, and the joyful eyes of an artist.
Which of these styles are you most excited to try? Share your backyard masterpieces with us on social media using the hashtag #GohLingYongArtBlog! We can't wait to see the beautiful light you and your little artists capture.
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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