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The saying goes that April Showers bring May Flowers, and May Flowers bring Pilgrims to America. Wait, that’s not it at all. That was the Mayflower. Totally different. Sorry.
Anyway, spring is a great time for flowers, for sure, and one of the great things about flowers (apart from bees and their fragrance, if you’re into that sort of thing) is the enormous variety of colors they come in. Pink, red, blue, yellow, even black. Today we’re going to use those colors in a little science and art project. No, you won’t be painting flowers…You’ll be painting with flowers.
Materials
- Flowers in many colors
- Small Ziplock bags
- Bowls or small glasses
- Hot water
- Paper
- Paintbrushes
- A rolling pin (optional)
Process
- First, you’ll need to gather some flowers. If you have some in your yard, great! If not, it’s time for a nature walk. Make sure your flowers are in a variety of colors.
- Pull the petals off of your flowers—playing loves me/loves me not is optional. Keep them in small piles separate from each other.
- Put each color of petal into its own Ziplock baggie and add some hot water. Just a little bit. Too much and your paint might be too thin to use.
- Using a rolling pin or just your hands, crush and smash the petals. Seriously moosh them as much as you can for a few minutes.
- Let your petal baggies sit for a couple of hours so the pigments inside can mix with the water.
- Pour each of your new watercolors into a small glass or bowl, trying your best to pull out the remaining chunks of petal from each one.
- Grab some paper and a brush and go to town!
Summary
The reason you’re able to use the flower petals to create simple paints is because petals are colored with something called pigments. A pigment is any chemical that gives color to something. For example, human skin is colored by a pigment called melanin. The more you have, the darker your skin is. A suntan is just your skin producing extra melanin to help protect it from the sun. The pigment that makes the leaves and stems of plants green is called chlorophyll.
Each of the flowers you chose had a different pigment lending color to its petals, and those pigments are water soluble, meaning they can mix with water the way salt or sugar can. They leaked out of the flowers’ cells when you mooshed the petals and dissolved in the water making a very basic paint. To make fancier paint you’d need more pigment, chemicals to thicken the paint up, or even oil as a base instead of water, but the basics of paint is simply a base with pigments mixed into it.
Want more Saturday Science? See all of our at-home activities on the blog or Pinterest.
