I saw this project on Cassie Stephens’ blog, In the Art Room.  I loved the bold, bright colors and the contrast of the strong black lines.  Cassie was inspired by the art of Dean Russo.  I wasn’t familiar with his work but enjoyed checking his work out.  Cassie used india ink in bingo daubers to draw the animals.  I loved this idea but noticed how careful she had to be when adding color since the india ink reactivates when wet.  I knew this would be an issue for some of my kiddos.  So, I decided to have them draw their animals with black acrylic paint and a brush.  For the younger groups, I did a directed drawing of a tiger of the board.  The older group drew from pictures I printed off.  I let them use pencil and then fill in with acrylic paint.

My favorite part of this project was how we added color.  I’ve heard of this technique before, but this is the first time we have done it in class.  We first talked about analogous colors.  I wanted to make sure our colors stayed bright, and sticking with analogous colors helps prevent accidentally missing compliments and making mud. 🙂  We used chalk pastel to add color and then blended the chalk with our fingers and liquid starch.  The starch made the colors brighter and also made it more like paint so that it didn’t brush off.  This was great for the final step, which was adding pattern with oil pastels.

Definitely a successful project.  I will be using the starch/chalk technique again.  Thank you, Cassie, for the idea.

I love all the different types of animals that came from my tiger-like directed drawing.  Dogs, cats, bears, jaguars, etc… So fun!