Painting with Music - Inspired by "I See a Song" by Eric Carle


We've recently been inspired by Eric Carle's 'I See A Song', a beautiful picture book that transports the reader on a magical musical journey. A violinist introduces himself at the beginning of the book saying; "I see a song. I paint music. I hear colour"

As you start to read, the black & white illustrations of the violinist fade, & Eric Carle's wonderful artwork transports you through a colourful masterpiece.

I See a Song (Blue Ribbon Book)

 Minnie loves studying the illustrations & describing which shapes & objects she sees on each page of the book. Inspired by the illustrations we listened to a selection of classical music tracks to see if we could 'hear' colours. Minnie is currently fascinated by the ocean, & as soon as she saw a large art canvas she wanted to paint the sea, so we collected our art materials. 

Our art supplies for this activity  were varied & nearly all recycled; we had paintbrushes (large & small), shells & pebbles, sticksstring & ribbons, sponges, bubble wrap, corrugated paper, jute gauze, & pencils. I added an old plastic food tray (purchased from a local Scrapstore) which was ideal to use with the different sized painting tools. 


We selected our music Anitra's Dance from Peer Gynt Suite No.1 by Grieg & Minnie started to create!

She started painting with brushes, then with her hands, & soon explored the other items.


Here's a glimpse of Minnie creating with a selection of different materials. (The scraping noise is a shell she's moving along the canvas.)


As she painted she named each paint colour to herself, & briefly described what she was painting. She filled a big paintbrush with blue paint & shouted; "Deep blue sea, deep blue sea!" In this video clip you can hear her painting "Blue sky... a big blue sky!"


The hand painting & exploration continued...



She loved experimenting with the textures & pattern of the bubble wrap.


The gauze & bubble wrap produced some beautiful effects.


Minnie clearly enjoyed exploring the texture of the paints, as you can see!
In case you're wondering, those are not blue gloves!!


It was fascinating to observe her movements as she painted in time to the music with the roller & brushes. As certain parts of the music grew louder, Minnie smacked the paint onto the canvas & as the music grew softer, her fingers swirled & blended the paint.


 The last clip shows Minnie adding her green paper 'seaweed' to the painting. Her high pitch voice almost seems to be singing along with the music as she sprinkles her seaweed over the canvas.


Some seaweed remained on the canvas, but she removed most of it before adding some cotton wool, & ripped pieces of tissue paper. This gave a new dimension to her creation, & it became a multimedia work of art.


Here's Minnie's finished picture.


Can you hear the music of the sea?


I love the movement in the painting. What could this beautiful brushstroke be?


It was wonderful to observe Minnie's creativity, expression, & sensory exploration as she painted alongside the music, it just made my heart sing!
And I think the finished picture is pretty beautiful too!