2nd and 3rd graders made weavings from papers that they had painted using watercolor and tempera paste. This is a beautiful version of the traditional weaving projects we do with colored construction paper in elementary school.
With the watercolor project, I had the students create two paintings; one warm color (yellow, orange and red) and one cool color (green, blue and purple). Starting with our warm color scheme, we looked at the color wheel and I told the students we would begin with our lightest color first, making a dot or a line (or 2 or 3 of them) on their watercolor paper with the yellow paint. They would then need to paint concentric circles or lines around their original ones with the orange, and then the red. Then they would repeat the pattern until they had filled their whole paper (9" x 12") with color. The students then repeated the same process using the cool colors on a new sheet of watercolor paper. In our second art class, we then wove the papers together for beautiful results!
For the tempera paste painted papers, I used a mixture of 1/2 tempera paint to 1/2 art paste to make the tempera paste. Using donated construction paper (the lesser quality kind than we normally use in the art room), students chose either the warm or cool color schemes to paint with the paste paint, then scraped and stamped designs and patterns into their paper using forks, thread spools, cardboard scrapers, popsicle sticks, and other objects (a la Eric Carle). The second art class we wove the wonderful papers they created together and the students loved the way they looked!
