How to make comb paintings

Why not swap a paintbrush for a comb to make some wonderful pictures? Children will enjoy the feel of the paint as it moves along between the teeth of the comb and will come up with some lovely effects. Here we show you how to make a painted rainbow picture.

Squeeze blobs of paint along your paper. Put dots of red, yellow, green and blue in a line and then repeat the dots along an arc as shown in the picture above.

Take an old comb and place it carefully on the first line of dots. Now for the fun bit! Comb the paint along with a curved motion. The comb will pick up all the colours and start to mix them as you go along.

You end up with a colourful rainbow. Why not glue on some cotton wool balls as a cloud at one end?

Painting with a comb is such fun that children might prefer just to squeeze different coloured blobs of paint all over the paper and then just 'comb' over them all to make a lovely textured and marbled effect.

As with all our craft ideas, once you have shown the children the technique then do let them explore and come up with their own ideas.