Third Layer, Shadow Sites

The melted crayon and the homemade puffy paint gave the paintings both layers and texture and the shadows needed for the imagined aerial views. The third layer of tempera paint in white, brown, and black should give the paintings the highlights of the landscape. After this, we will take our departure from the desert landscapes of Jananne Al-Ani to shape landscapes that the children imagine. I think paint chip samples will be in our future.

These details of the some of paintings show little moments of wax resist. Each painting is different, but one thing was consistent. The children are enjoying it and most of the black painting finally came off our hands.

2nd Layer, Shadow Sites

Serendipity is the name of this game. Last week during a parent-teacher conference, a parent brought in a painting her son wanted to show me. There was a kind of puffy paint on it and I asked the mother what it was and she told me it was a mixture of white glue, shaving cream, and food color. What? Jump in with two feet, don't even look where you will land. Monday rolled around and I mixed up a batch right away. Not knowing the ratio of glue to shaving cream wouldn't be the thing to stop anyone would it? Since we are working on shadows for our Al-Ani Shadow Site studies, I used black tempera instead of food color.

I bought a batch of palette knives earlier in the summer, so the children were all set to for spreading this thick substance. They used forks and potato mashers for the lines and ridges. So cool!

The first layer of this work is discussed here, Encaustic Preschool Style. These are not done! There will be more. If you visit the Shadow Sites at the Sackler, I think you will see where we are headed next.

Encaustic Preschool Style

I have been brainstorming and fishing around for some way to get that layered, shiny, ridged, smooth, color under color, and flat-all at the same time-look that encaustic gives surfaces into the classroom since I met the magical artist Robin Rose and his wife Judy Penski at our friends/alumni's house. I had a long, long talk with him about the encaustic process. It needs proper ventilation for one thing and heat for another. Preschool translation, not so much. Then bing-da-bing, melting crayons with blow dryers came on the scene out there in the early childhood blogosphere and we got ready to jump right on in though I was waiting for just the right project.

But wait, there's more. This year, I was also fishing around for a project this Fall for our Sense of Place project. I want to find an exhibit here in the Washington, D.C. area. In the past, we have used Guillermo Kuitca (Hirshhorn) and Chris Martin (Corcoran). Essentially, we are looking for mapping in art. Bing-da-bing, our galleries came through for us again, this time the Sackler and Jananne Al-Ani and her Shadow Sites. What better way to to imagine the ridges and lines of landscapes' deep textures, smooth and soft, rough and raw, than some kind of preschool-friendly encaustic?

These photographs collected here are from the first layer...a crayon melting session. There will be another layer in short order...so, so, so, cool! Please stay tuned, you will not regret it!

Tips -- Hot glue the crayons in place. These are being melted on a black tag. I chose this heavy stock so that it would hold up to future layers (stay tuned!). Try to find the lightest blow dryers possible, these make it easier for the children to hold. It takes a long time to melt the crayons. Some crayons melt better than others. Most of ours were Crayola. Don't buy crayons, ask for donations.

We are using only dark colors (shadows) for these early layers.