Spray bottle painting is a fun refreshing way to create art, and everyone in the family can get involved! Additional bonus? It isn’t as messy as it may sound.

There are times when art activity is meant to produce results. For instance, when we made a watercolour map, we did have a finished project in mind. But process art is all about making experiments and having fun while painting! Spray bottle art is like that. We will probably not end up framing it and displaying in the centre of our living room, but it was such a fun activity to do with kids on a warm summer day.

…If you’re particularly daring, it works inside too. A while ago, when our son was a toddler, he used to steal a spray bottle and sneak around with it, hoping to catch a moment when he could spray us from around the corner. We thought that there must be a better way for him to use his spray bottle and tried a couple of artistic experiments. We did it inside and had some rags and towels ready to catch water. Spray bottle painting for toddlers was definitely a hit in our house that winter!

It’s been a couple of years, and our son still loves playing with spray bottles. So, we’re going to give it another go, but this time we’re doing it outside.

Materials for Making Spray Bottle Art

• spray bottle (if you don’t have a spray bottle, you can try a spray gun like Fireflies & Mudpies did)
• a big piece of paper (on the pictures below, we used plain, rather thin, drawing paper – it was just for fun; if you have any artistic aspirations, use watercolour paper that can withstand all the water)
• watercolours (liquid or pans)

Spray Bottle Painting in Progress

Spray Bottle Painting Techniques

We attached our roll of paper to a fence with some tape. I found the setup very inspiring. An old stump for a table, birds singing and lilacs blooming all around. I would definitely feel like painting in this setting. What about you?

The idea here is to make some designs with a brush, then spray it and watch how the colours flow and blend, then start dribbling down.

There was a lot of space on the piece of paper, so it took Anselm a while to cover it all. While it’s very much an abstract piece of art in its finished state, he was painting lots of pictures before spraying them out to smithereens and making them disappear. There were houses, spaceships and even letters!

Here is a finished close-up. It’s interesting how the drops of water created speckled texture in some places. Rather similar to painting with salt! In other places though, the colours blended really well. I will keep it mind for when I paint with watercolours!

One picture wasn’t enough, so we made another one after the first piece dried out. It happened surprisingly quickly outside, despite the amount of water that we dumped on that piece of paper. You can watch a video below to see the process.

There is a lot of fun to be discovered in playing with textures and creating whimsical compositions. At a later date, kids can decide to use them as backgrounds to continue drawing and painting on.

Also Try

Have some fun right in your backyard with our nature STEAM bundle! Children will learn about nature while playing games, completing engineering challenges, going on scavenger hunts, and making art with natural materials.

More Watercolour Projects

Try our printable rain art prompt with this technique! We did these paintings with droppers, but it sure would be fun to try them with a spray bottle next.

Paint space with pipettes, salt, and watercolours!

Mix watercolour pencils and rain together and get some beautiful rain art,,,

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