Day 15 - #WorldWatercolorGroup - Painting Easter Eggs - Dyed Easter Eggs on Grass - #doodlewash
By Charlie

Painting Easter Eggs

Written by Charlie O'Shields

Since it’s Easter weekend, the prompt of “grass” immediately made me think of an Easter basket and eggs. I started to sketch in pencil, but since grass is so crazy, I decided instead to go straight to ink and creating a sort of grassy pattern for this one. When I was a kid, we always painted eggs on this day, but more often we dyed them. I looked up the old PAAS kit that I used to use to see if they still made it. They do, but it seems like the more deluxe versions are now all the rage. I loved the original one, though, because it came with a “magic crayon” that you could use to draw something on your egg before dying it. When you dunked your egg in the vinegar and water mixture with that little color pellet, the drawing stayed white and magically revealed itself! So much fun! Since I don’t have a kit this year, I dyed my eggs with watercolor, careful to get that blotchy look I used to give them as a child. I kept changing my mind on the color back then, so I was always dunking them back in each of the other colors. They weren’t pristine, but they were my first little pieces of art.

Of course, the egg painting was fun, but the real fun came the following day when we would have an Easter Egg Hunt. Our parents would hide the eggs all over the yard and then we kids would have to try and locate them. This ritual worked out perfectly, unless, my parents forgot the exact number of eggs that were hidden. Since we used real eggs for our hunt, finding one on Easter is amazing, but smelling a rouge one a few days later was grotesque. Finding a rotten egg isn’t as easy as it seems, since the smell is so pungent that it floats in every direction. This only happened once that I can recall and after that, the eggs were all carefully counted before the game began. Spotting an egg was such a huge thrill and I can still remember the feeling to this day. It was like finding a little treasure. I now realize the importance of the Easter basket as it was a way to distract me from my treasure while my mother stole the eggs back. Then she’d transform my little treasures by deviling them or turned them into egg salad while I trotted off to enjoy my sugar coma.

These days, with family too far away to gather with on Easter, we’ll be just three and will forgo the egg hunt. Though I’m sure Phineas would have enjoyed it, it would be far harder to steal eggs back from a dog. And with his enhanced sense of smell, I think it wouldn’t be a fair game anyway. We’ll still have that special meal to celebrate and I’ll always have the fond childhood memories to look back on. It wasn’t just the ritual of creating those little pieces of art, it was the time spent doing it as a family. Those wonderful traditions that happened each and every year that brought us back together again for a few cherished moments. I thought about picking up one of those kits and trying it again, but I didn’t do it. Perhaps, I’ll try it next year. This year, I’m content, enjoying time with my little family, grabbing a paintbrush and some watercolor, and, like a kid again, happily painting eggs.

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About the Doodlewash

Sennelier L’Aquarelle: Indian Yellow, Opera Rose, Red Orange, Phthalo. Green Pale, Phthalocyanine Blue, and Payne’s Grey. Lamy Safari Al-Star Fountain Pen – Extra Fine, with Platinum Carbon black ink in an A6 Hahnemühle Watercolor Book.
  Day 15 - #WorldWatercolorGroup - Painting Easter Eggs - Dyed Easter Eggs on Grass - #doodlewash

Charlie O'Shields

Creator of Doodlewash, founder of World Watercolor Month (July), World Watercolor Group, and host of the Sketching Stuff Podcast. Sharing watercolor illustrations and stories while proudly featuring talented artists from all over the world!

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17 thoughts on “Painting Easter Eggs”

  2. Thanks for the walk down the PAAS memory lane! I, too, loved that “magic” crayon. I won’t be dying or painting eggs this year, but your painting makes the holiday complete for me!

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  3. Happy Easter Charlie! Easter egg hunts, of the chocolate variety, were fun as a child, and my mother brought extra European traditions to it as well, such as painting designs on boiled eggs. I enjoyed that. I miss that. 🙋

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  4. I used to love dipping the eggs in multiple colors…not having the patience to leave them in one color long enough for total saturation. Those are good family memories.
    Enjoy your Easter, Charlie! (K)

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  6. I loved painting eggs as a child too! 🐰🌷🐣 I remember one year we hid plastic eggs with money in it for my neices and nephews! That was super fun! 😄 Yet, I agree, it is the childhood memories with family traditions that bring back the fondest memories. Happy Easter, Charlie! 🌈💕

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  8. Happy Easter! This all sounds such fun – I love the magic crayon idea. I don’t know if Easter Egg hunts went out of fashion in the 90s, because I don’t remember them in any way. It’s certainly not something I’d have turned down, so it’s the only explanation I can muster! I do, however, remember an Easter Egg draw at college where we were assigned a set of random numbers; mine were called about four or five times in a row (!) and so I won pretty much all the prizes they had. People were convinced it was a fix – heck, even I was unsure. 😛 I did share the eggs around, I hasten to add – no way was I carrying those around all day! 😉

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    1. Thanks, Jacob! 😃💕 Happy Easter to you as well! No egg hunt? really? hehe… ugh… if it did go out of fashion than that was a mistake! Too fun!! lol And wow… sounds like you were really lucky in the Easter Egg draw. That’s too funny! At least you shared! Good man!! hehe

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