To make this large abstract painting I made long brushes with a dowel rod and yarn. I then placed the paper and paint on the floor. From their chairs the students moved the "brushes" around the paper.

Working with a student

Here I am working with one of my students. She has made a lot of progress over the year. She finally feels comfortable with me and we paint together almost every class. Although she only paints for about 10 minutes at a time she feels proud to have a canvas all her own.

The paintings seen above were created with two essentials in my room; liquid watercolors and dippty dye paper. The watercolors are so useful, if you don’t already have some put them on the list for next year. The paper absorbs paint like fabric and doesn’t break down.

The students used medicine droppers to apply paint to the paper. It spread out and soaked in. They then stamped circles on their paper with half of a paper towel roll. I added a handle on the other end of the cardboard tube so the student could hold on to it.

Mono Prints

I have done monotype printing in a few of my classes. They always turn out very unique. These were done by pressing bubble wrap and the ribs of corrugated cardboard into the spread ink. In the second layer of color the students scraped waves in the ink with a piece of chipboard.

What do you do with powdered Tempera?

These really simple works were done by wetting black paper, laying it on the floor and then sprinkling the powder paint onto the paper. After the paper dries spray with fixative. Any one can do this project.