Taped Abstract

Do you ever find yourself running out of tape?  Believe me, it's not magic! It seems no matter what, tape seems to vanish at the end of the week.  And where does that tape find itself? Outside of finding its way onto the floor, the table, and elsewhere in the room, the kids have ingenius uses for tape. Elongated telescopes need multiple applications of tape. Paper planes need fortified underbellies. You name it, children can invent unnamed uses for tape.

In early April, while searching for projects online, I found another use for tape that the kids had not thought of (neither had I for that matter).   Personally, I had never done a block painting before and thought it might be worth the try. On http://mariateorien.blogspot.dk/2012/06/tape-painting.html, the kids saw the painting and got inspired.  Look at what they did.

For the first round of paint, we used acrylic paint and found for those first few paintings, the paint had bleed under the tape.  Either our paint was too watery, or a few students did not place the tape down correctly.  Then, I thought why don't we use oil paints.  I don't know if this was a good idea or not.  Certainly, the paint laid down better than the acrylics, but the oils took forever and a year to dry and the kids had to be careful how they handled them.  Those paintings were sitting on the ledge for weeks!

Here is one child peeling the tape off his painting.

  

 

My photography certainly is lacking, but can you see the bleeding of paint on the canvas? That was a heartbreaker to see.  I went over a few with white oil paint so that the bleed wouldn't be so obvious.

Supplies:

1. acrylic or oil paints

2. canvas

3. tape (various dimensions, if you like)

4. paint brushes

Directions:

1. let kids place tape on canvas in the arrangement that they like

2. when dry, peel tape off canvas

Duration:

With us, it took one week to finish this project.  Not bad for this kinder/first grade group. They actually did a great job considering the bleed problem.