If your house is similar to mine, where your children are slightly obsessed with scratch paper – then this art is for you! The absolute thrill of scratching off the top colour to find another nestled beneath is akin to magic for our little and big children. However, the cost of these magical papers is quite astounding…so, let’s make our own!
You will need:
- A4 paper
- A scratch tool (or something pointy – I use the end of a paintbrush for my kids when they are fighting over our scratch tool!)
- A pack of Oil Pastels – I used Micador, but any brand will work. Office works sell Faber-Castell and Staedtler oil pastels for under $10, as would most stationary stores.
- Great arm muscles!!!
The arts learning is about layering, as you will need to layer dark over light colours, for this to work really, really well. Apart from that, the process is simple!
Begin by creating patches of lighter colours all over the page. You will need to press really hard and make the pastels look thick, not showing any white from the page behind. It doesn’t not matter where you put the colour, or the shapes that you make…there are NO mistakes in this art room. Plus, we love mistakes in art as they generally create a whole new way of thinking and doing.
Once you have a thick layer of colour on your page, you can go over all (or some) of the coloured areas in another layer of oil pastels. Yes, you heard right…put a darker or complementary colour straight over the first layer! Crazy…I know!
Once this is done, the fun begins! Using your scratch tool, or the like, you can begin to create patterns on the double layered areas of your artwork. If you don’t like the pattern – guess what? You can go over it again and re-scratch. Amazing right!!
In the art room we can use this ‘magic paper’ for collage art, which is bright and funky. I added a couple of amazing art works for you to look at…
Enjoy your home-made scratch paper people!
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