Working with texture!

This past week we have just finished up working with texture in 4th and 5th grade! We started off talking about fall and how the leaves change to from green to beautiful fall colors. We then discussed texture and how artist create texture on their art using various techniques and how texture is how something feels when you touch it. Things can be hard, soft, silky, rough, smooth, furry, etc. I also introduced them to the technique of crayon resist! We began by taking leaf patterns along with acorns and pinecones and began to trace then randomly on the paper. I told them that we wanted our leaves to look as if we put our paper on the ground and the leaves just landed on them. I told them that leaves never fall in a certain order, they just randomly fall to the ground and we wanted to achieve that on our paper. They did a great job with making sure they were going off the page and overlapping to make them more interesting!

We did all tracing in pencil first so if they need to erase they could!  Once all pencil lines were drawn, the next step was to trace on top of their lines with a crayon real heavy( this will help us when painting). I didn't tell them to use a certain color, they chose whatever they wanted!

The crayon just makes their leaves pop!

After they traced their leaves, the next step was to take texture plates ( I love these things and so do the kids) and begin filling in their background with different texture. They simply put the texture plate under their paper and used crayons to texture rub. The kids loved this step and it makes the background stand out! They could choose whatever color they wanted for this step. Some chose numerous colors for their backgrounds.

Once the textured background was complete, the last step was to begin painting their leaves and then their background! The crayon with the tempera cakes helps keep their paint from bleeding together. This technique is called crayon resist!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of a finished piece because they were so excited to take them home, but believe me they turned out lovely!!!!