Monster Painting - The Craft Train

Here’s a super fun and easy monster painting project that suits kids of all ages. Free masking template available for download.

This is a great Halloween craft idea and makes colourful wall art too.

You might also like these 3D monster portraits

How fun are monster-themed crafts? I can’t get enough of them. We already have peg monsters, monster lanterns, felt monsters, and lots more. Here’s another fun idea to add to the collection—monster painting.

This simple Halloween art idea uses a masking template to get the monster mouth and eye shapes. We’ve used a combination of cut-up sponges and sponge brushes for the painting.

The fiddliest part is peeling the wet mask shapes away again without smearing paint over the white space. Using a skewer to lift the edges makes it easier but little kids may still need help with this part.

If you make a mistake and paint leaks under the masking shape, it’s not a disaster. You can work back into it with coloured marker later and have the leakage become part of the artwork. Eg. mouldy-looking teeth like in the picture below.

Are you ready to get monstrously creative?

Monster painting art activity for kids

You will need

Sponge brushes and/or pieces of kitchen sponge cut into smaller shapes
Acrylic, poster, or regular kids paint
Blu-tak to hold the masks in place
Coloured markers (we’ve used sharpie markers)
Scissors
Good quality art paper or white card stock
The printable masking template – add your email address to the form below to get your copy

How to:

Cut the masking shapes out.

Choose some monster features for your art—any combination of eyes and mouth or teeth. Use a tiny ball of blu-tack to hold these in place on a blank sheet of paper.

Sponge paint all over and around the features. If the mouth has teeth cut into it, dab a different colour over the teeth or leave them blank if you want white teeth. If you accidentally colour them the same as the monster’s fur, don’t worry. You can paint white over them later (which is what I did with my pink monster).

Optional: Dab an extra colour over the first one to give a more textured-look to the monster’s fur.

Use a skewer to lift the edges of the mask shapes away from the paper and peel them away completely. You need to do this while the paint is still wet or it will stick and may be difficult to peel away after drying. Gently pick the blu-tack away and allow to dry.

Use markers to add detail to the eyes and mouth. Outline the teeth, mouth and eyes in black so they ‘pop’. Add a nose, ears, horns, hair, beard or whatever you like to your monster. Get creative with it.