I've never heard of magic painting books. I wonder if they have these in the US.
As for paints ... isn't that more messy than crayons? They sound messy to me. 
DD likes to touch everything, including herself, so I can already imagine paint on her face as she rubs her eyes/face/etc, paint on her clothes, paint on the table/carpet, paint on her toys, etc..
How did you introduce paints while trying to keep most things relatively "clean"?
Natalie is also at the "crayons are yummy" stage but once in a while she'll make a mark by chance and get fascinated with that process for a while. Watching Josie and me do it helps too, although it's slow going at the moment.
As for HOW we introduced paints, I think almost all this stuff we introduced outside with Josie. We have a Little Tykes easel that was donated to us and that helps keep the drawing mess contained. Painting, especially finger painting, was done on the easel or on a plastic tablecloth on the grass or the patio (you can get BIG sheets of plastic tablecloth material cheap at Hancock Fabrics, BTW
, and we have a big enough one that we can use it on the kitchen floor (the idiots who built this house put HARDWOOD in the kitchen and dining room
) when the weather is too wet or cold outside.
Yesterday I took a big roll of paper and unrolled a few feet in the backyard and Josie and her friend stripped down to their undies and finger-painted - and FOOT-painted too! Easy to hose them down and towel off w/old towels afterward, plus we had the little wading pool for more rinsing.
Also fun to paint each other! Oh, and Target sells body art gel markers that Josie has had fun using on her AND on me!
Oh, and the magic paint books? Try A.C. Moore. They have GOBS and GOBS of kids' art and craft projects, some of which are actually age-appropriate (unlike the paint-by-number my mom got Josie that turned out to need the colors MIXED for over half the space, plus I'm not big on p-b-#'s anyway, not open-ended enough to suit me
. ACMoore also has these magic paint books that work with one of their markers; Josie has two of the winnie-the-Pooh books. They're also not too open-ended, but they DO keep her busy in the car w/o any mess.
Oh, and you may want to try Color Wonder products (Crayola makes these). We have the markers, and you can get books and also just plain sheets. The idea is that the markers make no color anywhere except the Color Wonder paper, which has a prepared surface so the color even stays inside the lines. The kid DOES at least pick the color(s), though, and I believe there are also Color Wonder finger paints that work the same way.
One other idea: do drawing and painting in the bathtub. You can do regular painting, with paintbrushes on paper, and then when they're done just hose down the tub, OR you can use bathtub crayons or finger paints (note: a friend of mine w/a dairy-allergic DD says the fingerpaints can have lactic acid in them). If you use the Crayola bathtub crayons, though, do make sure that they come off completely w/o staining; our tub is OK, but sometimes, especially w/older tubs, the grout can stain permanently, so test first!
Hope this helps you get started!
