This spooky castle uses a technique where you use different sizes of card to drag paint up the page. It will make a different kind of castle every time. There's no right or wrong way to do it, and it's a very tactile way to paint.
Time: 1 hour
Age: 5 to 10's, Over 10's
Level: Medium
Materials
Large sheet of thin card or thick watercolour paper
Acrylic paint in turquoise, blue, white, and black (or try orange, pink, red, and black for a sunset castle)
Small pieces of card of different widths (I used offcuts of mounting board that I picked up for free at a local gallery and framer. Try one near you, often it will save them the trouble of disposing of them.)
Black pens - a fine felt tip and a thicker felt tip
Squeeze a little of the turquoise, blue, and white paint in a line across the bottom of the page. It should be just about a quarter up the page. You need to leave enough room to add shadows later on.
Take a small piece of a card and place in below the paint line. Drag it upwards to make a rectangular building shape. Repeat using different widths of card and varying the height of the buildings. Make sure you leave enough room at the top to draw the roof and weather vanes. Again, about a quarter of the page should do.
Once dried, squeeze some black paint out onto the plate. Using the different widths of card dip them into the paint and then drag these up the buildings.
Use the black paint and the thin edges of the cardboard to add walkways between the towers. You can also use the black paint to add small shadows of the towers at the bottom.
When all the paint has dried, start to add details with the black felt-tip pens. You can add turrets,tower-tops with weather vanes, windows, doors, gates, and trees. There's no set rule for this - just add them where you think will be interesting.
Using the fine felt-tip, finish off by adding some birds flying around the towers.
