ART BY ACCIDENT IS ALWAYS A FAVORITE ART PROJECT.

It is not too difficult for kids from any age up to adult sophisticates.
Art by accident teaches awareness of visual effects, the serendipity of colors and forms that just happen without effort. It also is the best imagination stimulator I know.

ART BY ACCIDENT is done in two phases. The first is the adding of a thinned out poster paint by drips and dabs onto a soaked, wetted paper that has the ability to absorb color and moisture well. Medium weight drawing paper is good and soft textured manilla has always worked very well for us. Second is adding the imagination and drawing elements to the dried samples. For some guidelines; each picture tells a story, characters have detail, and the story has an environment or setting.

HINT(S): Students put their names on before they splash the art and leave it to dry. Otherwise its hard to relocate the owners the next day. Also, each individual in the class will do well to have 4 to 6 splash pictures to use or to choose from. Larger splash designs can be cut to smaller sizes and still produce beautiful little art gems.

Once the image sets and is dry, ART BY ACCIDENT challenges the imaginative ability. As we look at the indefinite forms, numerous ideas begin to present themselves. Students tend to see the kind of forms that interest them; funny creatures or monsters abound.

More sophisticated solutions will add forms to complete parts that are not clearly visible yet, (imagination is the ability to see things that are not there.)
In some cases students may have allowed the preliminary flows and washing of colors to merge together too much. In this case the result may not have enough variety. These that are more undefined still allow the use of the image as a background or environment to draw just about any theme
or subject.

Materials and Procedures:
The finishing touches can be done any way that suits or fancy. We usually
use sharpie markers to add line, shape and detail. Color markers also produce some good results. A really nice technique involves adding small
amounts of brush with a brush for highlights or details that would not look so good as a black line.