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45 Minute Lesson, Watercolor Resist


Here's a lesson that clocks in at less than an hour! Watercolor resist is a fun technique where kids draw with crayons and then paint over the entire drawing with watercolors. It introduces the idea of negative/positive space, as the wax in the crayons repels or "resists" the watercolors. We added a twist for Mr. D's class by using white crayons on white paper. The kids were only able to see their drawings once they started painting. We were going for a cool invisible ink effect.


SUPPLIES
  • Watercolor palettes (Art Closet). Some teachers stock palettes in the classroom so ask your teacher to supplement.
  • Paint brushes (Art Closet)
  • White crayons, one per child (Art Closet)
  • Watercolor paper (Blick in Pasadena; $15 for 30 sheets)

While the kids were at recess we set out the paper, watercolor palettes, and brushes. We also filled Dixie cups (Art Closet) with water and placed those at the desks, along with paper towels for blotting.

Before we started the project, I read the super fabulous book, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers. 


It's a story about a boy name Duncan who gets letters of complaint from his crayons. They all have different gripes (grey is exhausted because he's always coloring huge animals like hippos and elephants), but white is the saddest case. White never gets used and he's not even in the rainbow! So we told the kids we were doing a project to show off what white could do.



We asked the kids to draw anything they wanted with their white crayons (summer scenes, patterns) as long as they filled the page and pressed down hard. We turned the lights really low so they could see the white-on-white better. Turning off the lights added a bit of drama to the lesson that everyone seemed to like.

Then the kids painted the paper with watercolors and their drawings magically appeared! 

If you or your teacher wanted to extend the lesson, there are a lot of ideas on the publisher's web site: http://www.penguin.com/static/images/yr/pdf/CrayonsGuide.pdf



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