paint cut paste

i saw this lovely idea on the artful parent blog, and even just reading it brought back that olfactory memory of rubber cement for me… unfortunately, the fumes are way toxic so i was likely high as a kite as a child. regardless, it looked fun and beautiful, so we tried it (in a safe way.)

we went outside (for plenty of ventilation!) and i drizzled the rubber cement over some watercolor paper, while novi frolicked about the yard. you can buy rubber cement almost anywhere – michaels, target, the drug store, the grocery store. sometimes it’s called “paper cement.”

i left the papers outside to dry, and in the evening i put them in the garage to dry. (it was after a rainstorm, so it took forever for it to dry, it seemed.)

the next day, we were ready to paint. the areas with the rubber cement on them would resist the watercolor paints, thus keeping those parts of the page white. we used a palette of basic watercolor paints, and a wet-on-wet technique for applying. that just means that we brushed water over the paper first, and then dropped color onto the page using a sopping wet large brush. novi loved watching the colors spread and blend.

after our papers were dry, i peeled the rubber cement (or “purple boogers” as novi called them) off of the pages. this was quite satisfying when i’d get a large strip to come off at once, but sometimes i had to rub the page with my finger to get little particles of the rubber cement loose.

once all of the rubber cement (or in this case, the poor man’s masking fluid) was removed, the results were quite striking!

i think next time i’ll drizzle the rubber cement on so that it resembles a tree, and let novi make a lovely watercolored sky behind the tree silhouettes… yup, next time.

we’ve done this blog before… a wax resist lesson with crayons and watercolors… but this time novi reeeally got the idea and had a ton of fun doing so.

it helped her to have a concept like “things that are in the sky” to draw, and then to paint a blue sky around that. novi chose to draw a tree and a sunshine with crayon, and then paint the sky blue.

other ideas could be to have your child draw “things in the grass” like flowers and bugs, etc, and paint the grass around it. or “things in the ocean” and paint the water around it, etc. you get the idea. i realized that this sort of directive helps to make this art task come to life.

then we moved onto some other mixed-media crayon/watercolor pieces…

novi: "this is julie, and she has the sun on her face so it's yellow"

i’ve got a little girlie who just begs to “PAAAIIINTTT!” all the time. what a blessing for an art therapist momma, eh?

let's paint!

different kinds of paint evoke various emotions and require a range of developmental skills. when novi is feeling loud and bold, acrylics or tempra paints on large easel paper or canvas seem to do the trick. when she is in more of what i call “tinkering mode” (aka: playing quietly with her tiny figurines and inventing an imaginary world) or maybe she’s a little tired or tapped into a different plane… i’ve noticed that watercolors on a heavy, textured stock tend to soothe and satisfy.

on this quiet morning we tried a little mixed media project. novi colored with crayons on her thickwatercolor paper, which i taped down to a board to keep it stable. then she applied watercolor paint all over the crayon for a little wax-resist experiment.

waxing it up

then she carefully and quietly applied each of the colors of paint to the page. we talked about which colors she liked, what the remind her of, and how they make her feel.

in the flow

we also talked about how to blend colors to make new ones. (she’s really into mixing black with everything right now, so we discussed shade and light.) she enlisted my help in cleaning the brush between each color, so as not to muddy up her watercolor pots. (she’s not a kid who likes messes.) this led to our discussing how to care for paints and brushes – how to show respect for art materials. as one of my mentors once taught me, art feeds the soul, so the materials should be treated with the same care as the food one eats.

in the end, novi admired her work. this witnessing part of the art process is key: to stand back to view the finished product, and often to share it with another witness. in this case, me. she told me that her picture is of a ladybug crawling in the flowers. beautiful.

garden delight