Painting: wet-on-wet; chinese writing

This morning they had a lot more energy and wanted to do stuff so we made some Chinese new year banners/scrolls. Jem started with copying some Chinese writing with black paint and a brush, while I tried, in vain, to get Allie off to sleep by walking round the block. "What block? block of what?" "a block of wood- we're walking round a block of wood, so get your coat on" " where's the block of wood?" "outside". I did explain to Fugs later that we were walking round a block of houses. Anyway, Jem wanted to add some colour to the banners so we decided to paint the background and add black lettering. So we managed to get some Waldorf in there with wet-on-wet painting: use thick lining paper, brush it all over with water and thick brush and add one colour at a time- yellow first, then red or blue. If using ready-mix paint water it down so it runs into water, but is still bright. Watch the magic shapes appear.
Jem did her own lettering- Fugs expired before this point! The walk must have tired him out. I'd quite like him to have a go, though, if he wants to, it's quite fun and you dont have to do 'real' chinese writing.
We stapled painted cardboard tubes to some of them to look like scrolls, and threaded red wool through the tube to hang up.

painting session