Published: Mar 19, 2020 · Modified: Nov 20, 2022 by Shelly · This post may contain affiliate links · 38 Comments

Paint With Broccoli: Fun Stamped Spring Tree

If you can't eat it, paint with it!

So if you can’t get the grands to eat broccoli, perhaps you can get them to paint with it! Save a couple stalks of fresh broccoli back from your meal and Paint With Broccoli: Fun Stamped Spring Tree! The floret head makes a perfect brush to dab paint onto your canvas to create clouds and flower buds on your tree.

The Redbud Tree

My mother’s favorite tree was the redbud tree. In the spring her groups of redbud trees in the yard would bloom out in brilliant pink and red-violet colored buds before sprouting the new green leaves. This tree composition seeks to re-create that beautiful burst of spring blooms on the redbud tree.

Before you start, go online and show the grands what a redbud tree looks like as it blooms. This will help them to visualize what the tree looks like that they are going to paint.

Even better, if it's the right time of year and if you live in an area where trees are budding, take a walk and scout out a redbud tree in bloom. They are beautiful.

Paint the sky blue

Start the Fun Paint With Broccoli: Fun Stamped Spring Tree project by letting the grands paint the whole canvas the light sky blue color with an actual paint brush. I even paint the sides of the canvas to give the piece a more finished look when it is done and hanging on the wall or sitting on a shelf. Allow a few minutes for the paint to dry before continuing. Put some paper down under the canvas to keep the paint off your table!

This painting will work best on a vertical canvas to make the tree look taller. Place the painting up and down before going on to the next step. This could be a good time to teach the grands what portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) orientation is for a project.

Note: We used an 8x10 canvas for our project.

Paint With Broccoli- clouds!

Now the fun Paint With Broccoli begins! Let the grands squirt some white paint out on a paper plate. Dip the head of the broccoli into the paint and then onto the top area of the canvas to make clouds. Dab the paint, don’t brush it around. Make the clouds light and airy with rounded edges. Try not to add more and more paint because they get too solid looking.

Paint a trunk and branches

Using some of the brown paint and a paint brush, have the grands paint a trunk to the tree that starts at the bottom edge of the canvas. The trunk will extend about one third of the way up the canvas and get narrower as it goes up.

From the top of the trunk they will make 4-6 branches that reach out to about an inch from the edges of the canvas. These branches will keep dividing and branching out into smaller and smaller branches. The video shows how this is done and how it will look.

It may be a good idea to have the grands practice this on some newspaper before they begin to paint on the canvas. I've started doing this with my grands and it usually helps them get a better idea of size and shape on the canvas.

Now back to that fun paint with a broccoli paintbrush!

Place four blobs of paint on a clean paper plate using the two different tones of pink, the red-violet and the green paint. Place the blobs fairly close together so the head of the broccoli will dip into all four blobs at once. Remember to dab and not to brush the broccoli and paint around.

Paint the buds on the redbud

With a second piece of fresh broccoli, have the grands dip into the four blobs of paint and then dab the paint onto the canvas. It will make a mottled grouping of the four colors. The idea is to get the paint to look like the multi-colored buds of the blooming redbud tree. Again, like with the clouds, the idea isn’t to get a solid mass of color but a lighter more airy look. You should be able to see some of the sky through the buds of the tree you are painting.

Continue to dip into the paints on the plate and dab the buds on the tree until the grands are satisfied with how it looks. You may need to add more of the four colors of the paints to the plate to cover the whole tree with painted buds. And one more reminder, dab and don’t brush and swish the paint around.

May add some grass-

Something I thought of later was that it would look nice to dab a bit of plain green on the bottom of the canvas to look like a bit of grass. We’ll get that done next time!

Make a second tree for the fall

Change the last four colors to gold, orange, red and green and you can paint a tree on another canvas that has leaves that are turning colors in the fall! That would be pretty. If we make another fall tree next September we may paint the canvas a light peach color instead of blue, we'll see.

Send me a picture of how your redbud trees turn out!

More tree picture ideas?

Enjoy!

If you try this craft, let me know! Go ahead and leave a comment, rate it, and tag a photo with #WelcometoNanas wherever you post.

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