Saturday, October 1, 2011

Scratch Paper


Well, we've finally got good internet again, so here is the beginning of the Greek Art Lesson from  two weeks ago. You'll need to make scratch paper, so I'm posting that part today and the rest of the lesson tomorrow.
Scratch paper is really easy to make. Here’s how it’s done:
1- Color with crayons or oil pastels on a piece of paper or a thin piece of cardboard, like the inside of a cut up cereal box. You need to press really hard to get a nice smooth waxy finish. The oil pastels are messier than crayons, but I think they create a nicer, brighter finish. You can do a solid color, stripes, or any design you can imagine.
2- Mix about 3 Tbsp of tempera paint with 1/2 tsp of dish soap. Cover the drawing with a layer of the paint and let dry.
3- Once dry you are ready to scratch through to reveal your beautiful colors! A toothpick works great for the scratching.
*On one of mine I forgot the dish soap and it did make it a little harder to scratch a clean line.

Here are a couple of extra pieces (before the paint was applied) that I did for the kids to take home.
Try out different patterns or shapes of colors to scratch through to.




Now here are some more specific directions for making the scratch paper needed for the Greek Pottery lesson:

You could have the kids make the scratch paper, but I went ahead and made it for them.
We are going to be decorating Greek amphoras. An amphora has a long, thin neck, a wider base, and a handle on each side. We used three different styles of Greek decoration, geometric, black figure, and red figure. The colors combos are different for each of these but the shape of each amphora is roughly the same.

On a piece of cardboard or paper using the appropriate color for the style you are doing color hard in a rough shape of an amphora.
For geometric I did different colored stripes going up the amphora all in earth tones.
For black figure you need to use black crayon or oil pastel.
For red figure use red or a reddish brown.

Now you need to paint over the waxy surface with the appropriate color for your style. Don't forget to add a little dish soap to your paint. Paint only over the crayon or oil pastel. 
For the geometric I used a light brownish, peachish color.
For the black figure use red or a reddish brown.
For the red figure use black.

Once it dries you can cut out the amphora. To get a symmetrical shape I cut out one side first and then used the scrap from that side to trace the same cut onto the other side. If you are scared to just start cutting on that first side you can draw out your line on a piece of paper and cut the line. Then use it to trace the line onto both sides. To cut out the holes inside the handles I used and exacto knife. Again you can make a little piece of paper to trace before cutting so that both sides are the same.

*As I was making these I also made some little scrap pieces so the kids would have something to practice on before scratching into the real thing.

Here is what I ended up with:



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