Monday, August 22, 2016

water-soluble pencil and ink on acetate

During the animal art camp, the kids had the opportunity to discover a different material for drawing.

Acetate.

8 year old



I love to give the kids something new and different to try and this project is a great way for them to explore line and work on their drawing skills.

It is also a great project to use to focus on dark and lights.

7 year old


Each child chose a reference picture that the liked that we then taped to the table.

Over top we taped a piece of acetate, on the top only, so the kids were able to put a piece of white copy paper underneath to check their work without moving the acetate off the picture below.

I handed each chid a black marksall pencil, a small brush, a paper towel and a jug of water. If you don't have a marksall pencil, you could use an water-soluble pencil, ink, or even watercolor.

7 year old


The kids did their first pass over the acetate with the pencil. I asked them to focus on the direction of line on their animal.

What direction did the fur, scale or feathers run? All noticed very quickly that those directions changed quite a bit on their animals.

Once they finished, they lightly went over the lines with some water. Now everything was moving and since it's on acetate not paper, it continues to move throughout the project.

9 year old


I showed the kids how they could just wipe the paper clean if they were unhappy with results. I found all of them did this at least once while they were figuring out the process.

Once the first pass over the picture was complete, I encouraged them to repeat the same line work again or start focusing in on adding pencil where they saw their darks and again wash over it with water.

5 year old


Throughout the process, they could place the white paper underneath at anytime to check their work until they were happy with the results.

Once finished and dried, they turned the acetate over and applied colored inks to the acetate. Again, there isn't a lot of control and you can see the drips and such that happened in the final works.


9 year old

With a small bit of encouragement on my part, they all embraced this aspect of the unexpected.

7 year old


They were all very pleased with the final results and I found the work they created afterwards improved significantly based on the observations they had made drawing animals this way.

8 year old


When everything was complete, I sprayed a matte varnish over the pencil side of the drawing to set it. They applied a spray adhesive glue to the ink side and mounted it on a piece of  white bristol paper.

7 year old


When the kids came in the next morning, I think they surprised themselves a bit with what they had created.  I have to admit, they are pretty amazing.

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