Galt’s Mini Masterpiece – ‘The Kiss’ by Gustav Klimt

Earlier this year Galt Toys asked famous contemporary artist Ed Chapman to recreate Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe portrait using Galt arts and crafts materials. The result was a stunning Marilyn Masterpiece, which just showed the fantastic artwork that can be achieved with the right supplies and a little bit of imagination. Following on from this Galt has now launched its very own ‘Mini Masterpiece’ series – 6 templates from famous works of art that little ones can print and decorate themselves, to create their very own mini masterpieces!

My boys were very pleased to be invited to take part in the third challenge in the series until they heard which piece of artwork they were going to recreate. A mini masterpiece of ‘The Kiss’ by Gustav Klimt. Their art appreciation from previous gallery school visits vanished and there was a chorus of kiss, yuck. And why can’t we do Starry Night (which was the theme of challenge 2).

The Kiss is a very famous painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt. The painting is part of his ‘Golden Period’ when he created a number of paintings using a similar gilded Art Nouveau style, and took him a year to paint from 1908 until 1909. The masterpiece is of a man and woman embracing, each wearing an elaborate gold robe painted using oil paint with layers of gold leaf.

The boys were slightly mollified when I showed them the free product that Galt had sent us to help create their mini masterpieces. It was a Sponge Painting Set.

So we opened up the Sponge Painting set. Son1 pressed out the sponges whilst son2 pressed out the stencils. Meanwhile I was delegated to squeeze a dollop of each colour paint onto a saucer and mix with some water as per the instructions. It was difficult to judge how much water to add.

Then the boys set to, decorating their versions of ‘The Kiss’ with sponge painting. Frequent calls to mum to mix more paint or to wash a sponge so it could be used in a different colour. We did find that the sponges were mostly much bigger than the tiny sections of the design of ‘The Kiss’, so probably a fine paintbrush would have been easier to use in this instance than the sponges. But after getting over their initial reluctance, the boys had great fun producing their own mini masterpieces.

Also Galt are running a kids competition to win a big bundle of arts and crafts goodies. Just download and print off a copy of ‘The Kiss’ template for your mini artists to have a go at recreating.

Disclosure.  This post includes a review of a product I was sent for free.  All opinions are my own.