A Guide to Making Mud Paintings

First - you will need to go to the beach!

You will also need:

·      Clean recycled yoghurt pots (or similar) to collect muds

·      Old paint brushes (or why not make your own tools from sticks or feathers?)

·      Water

·      PVA glue or matt acrylic varnish to mix into the mud to bind it

·      One or more of the ‘YOU CAN DRAW AND PAINT WITH MUD HERE’ postcards to use as your canvas

What to do

• Place a handful of mud in a pot and mix with a little water to make a hot-chocolate-type consistency.

• Add PVA or varnish for a better flow of paint and to bind it (this stops it cracking and falling off).

• Experiment with different consistencies (add more or less water) to see the effect it has on your painting

• Collect different coloured muds from along the Somerset shoreline – have you noticed how red the cliffs and mud at West Beach are, compared to the greyer colours at Helwell Bay? Keep the different muds separate to enable you to have several colours to choose from.

• Paint away – and when you’ve finished, don't forget to add your mud painting to the online gallery by uploading to Instagram using the hashtag #mySHIFTmudpainting and tag @containsart1

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Did you know?

The first pigments for artists paint came from the earth and there are still artists who make a living using actual mud for their art – like Sara Dudman’s paintings in the exhibition.

Extending the activity

Collect different muds and sieve them so you have a finer mix, add an equal amount of PVA glue and water until you have a consistency of yoghurt. Use this to paint onto a larger canvas or cartridge paper.

Experiment with the smaller rocks and stones you find on the beach. Try drawing with them onto other rocks or on the back of the postcards. Some stones are quite soft and will make marks like using charcoal or pastels – so you can draw using rocks as well as painting with them!

saradudman.com

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