Works for me Wednesday: Texture & Pattern


Equipment for this week’s art activity idea is simple:

sheets of paper, pencils, wax crayons


The idea in a nutshell:

Find objects with a rough feel to them – walls, tiles, baskets, tree bark, leaves, coins

lay the paper down on top

firmly, but gently, rub with your pencil ( blunted is best) or side of your crayon

watch the pattern made by the texture appear on your piece of paper.


Indoors - track down the most ordinary of household objects and discover the secret patterns they hide.

You could suggest each child rubs in one particular room with everyone joining in at the end to guess which object made what pattern. (Once they've got the hang of this, use stubby white candles instead of a pencil, and then paint over the top revealing the inverse of the pattern.)

Outdoors – tree bark and the backs of leaves are obvious candidates here. Paths, pavements, tiles, grids, drains are fascinating too.

We’ve used this activity with Rhianna and Beka to make shopping more interesting for them, and it works well once the thrill has worn off when sightseeing or ‘doing’ a castle or museum too. Just keep an eye on where they scribble. Use a pencil!! + a small spiral bound notebook you can bend backwards. Tell the curious this is a ‘project’ and wait for them to join in finding textures. It is contagious!

The patterns here are from - top to bottom - a child's step and the metal frame of a mirror; my plastic kitchen step; the side of a cabinet. Even the very ordinary can produce interesting patterns.

Bulleted List
What do you do with all those rubbings?

  • Make a touchy-feely record of a day out in a scrapbook or for display on the wall. Add real leaves, stick in coins, bits of grass, dried flowers, other found objects.
  • Tear the pattern into shapes to make a collage picture. Basket weave patterns look like flowing water, for example.
  • Try to copy some of the marks you rubbed in another technique: straightforward drawing, or with a paintbrush or other types of markers. Make your marks much bigger than life size or make them teeny-tiny.
  • If you’re really ambitious you could use the images to prompt some writing. Divorced from the objects themselves, what do the patterns remind you of, make you think of? Is there a poem in there somewhere?


Older children might be interested to learn of ‘real’ artists who used this technique, which is called frottage. The index entry for it in just one of my art books led me to Leonardo da Vinci via Max Ernst and C18th painter Alexander Cozens.

Warning: Googling frottage on the other hand, is not something I would recommend you let your kids do!

Instead try this link to Surrealist Max Ernst at London’s Tate Gallery.


3 comments:

Jane said...

I used to love making rubbings at my grandmother's old house. Great post! Using colorful crayons to do the rubbings would make papers for collage along the lines of artist Eric Carle.

Amberly said...

Funny how you do something when you're young and totally forget about it by the time you have children of your own! We'll have to use this as an art project! Thanks!

My Trendy Tykes said...

I used to do this when I was a kid.....I have not even thought about doing it with my own kids. GREAT TIPS!

Linda

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