Over the past few weeks I notice two art projects tagged in Pinterest I wanted to teach my students. One a black glue drawing with watercolor resist, and the other a black glue drawing with the side of a credit card.
Using the inspiration from a local River Birch I began to created. I had one white glue about half full, and squirted in all of the black acrylic paint I had. Mixing was not easy, and I was determined not to get another tool dirty. I selected a large sheet of Bristol paper, and my Costco card, and poured a large amount of black glue on a sheet of glass. In the classroom I would use left over cardboard.
Dragging my credit card through the glue I went up and down the paper. Stings of glue fell over my sheet, like fine branches, a very happy accident. I moved the card up and down, left and right, thinking this would look like bark. Three trees, some branches, time to stop. Walk away. I allowed the sheet to dry over night.
The next day I washed the whole sheet with a light yellow water color, heavy with water, and sprinkled sea salt over the sheet. And allowed it to dry. Knocking the dry salt off, I went over the sheet with yellow watercolor to highlight the light and dark areas, watercolor wash in the bark areas with red, orange and yellow tones. Once dry again, I washed the complete image with a light wash of blue to fill in the very top and very bottom of the image.
In the classroom I would see this project as a two or three day project. Incorporate another project with it, and work on two projects at the sametime, one always in a state of drying.