Matariki and the Southern Lights art project

This little art project is super simple and easy to re-create. Your kids will love making this Matariki and Southern Lights-inspired art piece. You could start this project but telling your kids a little bit about Matariki and what the Southern lights are.

This project can get a little messy. You are going to be using chalk pastel or soft pastels, which create a a lot of coloured dust especially.

Also to make the background stars you will be using an old toothbrush to flick the paint onto the paper.

So before you start you want to make sure you have placed newspaper or a plastic cover on the table you’re using first. You may like to make sure your kids are wearing old clothes or an old shirt that you don’t mind getting paint and pastel on.

Matariki and the Southern Lights art project

What you need:
White and yellow paint
Black A4 paper
Chalk pastel also know as soft pastels in light and dark blue, light and dark green and red.
An old toothbrush
An extra piece of plain A4 paper or card
A tooth pick or end of a small paint brush

What to do:
1. Hold your plain A4 paper landscape and rip a mountain like shape across it. This will be used to mask off the hills.

2. First mask off the bottom third of your black paper with the ripped hill pattern you just made.

3. Then dip your toothbrush into some of the white acrylic paint, then run your fingers through the bristles of the toothbrush to flick paint over your black piece of paper. This will create the background starts.

4. While the stars are drying, use your ripped card and colour the top ripped edge of it in with your different coloured pastels. Make sure you change the colour every few centimetres.

5. Check that the paint has dried before continuing with this next step. If it is dry place the chalked paper onto your black paper. Now run your finger through the chalk upwards towards the stars. This should smudge the coloured chalk from the plain paper onto your picture.

6. Mix a small amount of yellow and white together. Make sure you use more white than yellow, you want it to only have a tint of yellow in it.

7. Using your tooth pick or the end of a paint brush dot in the Matariki constellation.

If you are looking for more art and craft ideas for Matariki be sure to check out these 7 Marvellous Matariki crafts for kids. And for 100s more art and craft ideas, check out our Creative arts and crafts section.