This project was inspired by my HATE of throwing away leftover paint at the end of projects. And so as the week went by, the students took the leftovers in their palettes at the end of each project and put them onto a piece of acrylic paper.
They started by putting the leftover dye from the bird paintings on the paper. It was a lovely mix of beautiful colors when they were finished, but you will only see it on one of the works below.
Then when they finished their animal acrylic painting, I envisioned them adding bits of the leftover colors in much the same manner as the dye, but the students had very different ideas. In the end, most of the papers were a color of mud in VERY THICK paint and I had to think very quickly on my feet.
I told them to take the back of their paint brushes and scratch into the work using a variety of scribbles and words. My hope was that some of the pretty dye work they had would show back through. No such luck, for the most part the dye work was completely gone but we had a lot of stories and such now on the paper scratched into the paint.
Hmmmm, not what I had envisioned and what to do next?
I decided to have them each create a silhouette of an animal and this was easier said than done for some of the students. To create a shape that was instantly recognizable and at the same time interesting proved to be a challenge, but in the end everyone got something to work.
Also remembering that bigger was better when creating the silhouette was hard for some too.
Once they had cut out an image, I put some white paint on the table and told them to dab it on around the image working out to the edges of their paper. The goal was not to make the paper a solid white.
When finished, they removed the paper cut and revealed the paint underneath.
Something magical happened as the paint dried. All those scratches and words they had put into that thick, muddy color created the most interesting patterns and shapes. You couldn't read their stories outright, but certain words "whispered" in the background.
Perfect!
Then I put out oil pastel, chalk pastel, graphite sticks and whatever else they wanted on the table and let them get to work.
Below are the students mixed media results inspired by all the leftovers from the week.
8 year old
8 year old
6 year old
6 year old
I need to add a little story to the below picture. Remember when I mentioned that I encouraged the students to create large silhouettes? Well sometimes we learn best by making mistakes. This student decided to cut out a very small snake. OK by me, since I tell them that in the end they are the artist and part of being an artist is to decide which suggestions of mine to use and which to ignore, but once the very small paper snake was peeled off the paper, there was not much of an image. At best it looked like a small worm.
So this became one of those great moments where a "yikes" becomes a "wow". Using her imagination, this student turned her snake into a branch and then began again with a paper silhouette, this time a bird. She then did the same process the other students did with the white paint using a black oil pastel.
8 year old
You might think this artist used paint to create the gecko image at the top of the paper, but that is just the underlying dyes and acrylic she had originally put on the paper. Kind of amazing how that worked out, yes?
10 year old
7 year old
All in all, some pretty stunning work created with nothing more than the leftovers of other projects. I have a feeling I'll be doing much more of this in the future.
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