Artist Inspired Easter Eggs

Here’s a super fun way to decorate Easter eggs: create artist inspired Easter eggs. This idea came from the book, Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister. Marcus Pfister is well known for his Rainbow Fish series. See how we painted our eggs and be inspired to make your own. I get commissions for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.

Henri, Egg Artiste by Marcus Pfister

In the book, Henri, Egg Artiste, Henri is a rabbit who paints eggs. The eggs are hidden on Easter for children to find. In the story, Henri is tired of painting eggs the same way as he always has. He wants to try something new. Henri finds inspiration from famous artists and paints his eggs in a similar style. Many of his painted eggs contain rabbits instead of people. The back of the book shows the original paintings so you can compare Henri’s eggs.

We chose 3 artists featured in the book as inspirations. Then, we looked through some other artists’ paintings online. Aiden (age 4 at the time) found 3 more he liked, so we got to work painting eggs.

Materials Used:

paper mache eggs (ours came in a package of 6)
paint (we used both tempera paint and acrylic)
paint brushes
markers
cardboard roll (cut into pieces for eggs to stand on while painting and drying)
pipe cleaner (used as an egg stand)

We placed our paper mache eggs on cardboard rolls to help us paint them. This also worked well for drying.

When looking at artists online, Aiden really liked van Gogh’s Starry Night. He wanted me to paint this egg. Originally, we were going to put on gold star stickers, but the stickers we had were too big. Aiden set out to work on the egg inspired by Mark Rothko’s Orange and Yellow. He chose red, orange, and yellow for his egg. Aiden decided to paint another egg completely orange. This egg received a splatter and drip painting technique inspired by Jackson Pollack. We did the splatter painting inside a box.

I painted the Monet inspired water lilies as well. Aiden chose that piece of art because of his soon to be born sister, Lily.

From the book, Aiden also chose the Keith Haring inspired art. Henri painted colorful dancing bunnies on his egg. I drew one bunny on our egg. I painted the bunny red and outlined the bunny in white. Aiden finished painting the egg white. On the third egg, Aiden used markers to draw and color circles. This technique was inspired by Kandinsky’s Several Circles.

Here’s all six of our artist inspired Easter eggs.

No Time for Flash Cards created van Gogh inspired Easter eggs that are very pretty, too. Take a look.

Which artists would you choose to imitate?

More Easter Activities for Kids

Easter Egg Rocket Races – Decorate plastic eggs to look rockets and them race them up to the sky or down to the ground.
Egg Rolling Baby Game – Explore ramps with this simple game for babies. It’s great for toddlers and older siblings, too.
Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt with Picture Clues – The picture clues make this idea perfect for toddlers and pre-readers. Kids can make their own clues, too.

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This post was originally published on March 10, 2014.