Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Dough Paint


Now that we've finally plowed through our supply of donated powdered tempera, as the man responsible for managing our curriculum supplies budget, I've had to re-think how we use it. We can still use it for floating powder paintings, for instance, but it is now cost prohibitive to just turn the kids loose with the stuff as we once did, letting them mix their paint to whatever consistency and in whatever amount they wished.

It was a glorious and engaging project, however, one that I hope one day to be able to afford again, but in the meantime, we came up with an alternative: we just stirred flour into regular tempura paint, then used tools like these . . . 


. . . to "paint" with our thick paint.



The texture was less like mud than when using the powdered tempera and more like a type of dough, slightly sticky, with a tendency to "rebound" into previous shapes if not "stretched" enough. I heard some of the children compare it to frosting. Others noticed the flour-y fragrance. 

I've always found it hard to take pictures of heavily textured work like this -- there's always some part of the painting that's out of focus, not to mention that the scraps of cardboard and mat board upon which we were working, warped and buckled as the paint cured (some of the kids used the paint-dough so liberally it's hard to think of it as "drying").










Then, as I've been trying to do with many of our indoor art projects, after having practiced on our individual pieces, we took the whole thing outdoors to have a go at it as a piece of community art.






It was fun, and the results are evoking lots of comparisons to Van Gogh, but I'm still waiting for that next donation of powdered tempera.

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5 comments:

  1. Barbara Zaborowski8:33 AM

    Another winner, Tom.

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  2. I love the idea of moving it outdoors as a community art project.

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  3. Aaaahhhhh ... the old flour in the paint trick!
    YES that is exactly what I need Tom! Some of our children are into all sorts of unusual paint experiences and the moment, especially a small group of girls who still enjoy painting their hands and arms ... all the way up past their elbows. I reckon this would go down a treat. Thanks for the light bulb moment my friend!
    Donna :) :)

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  4. Fantastic! An amazing process, with an amazing product! I love when those two come together! I'm sure the thick ones will eventually dry. I still have a few paintings and a number of glue projects sitting from weeks ago. I know they are close to being "cured." On another note, Do you present at conferences at all??? I'm the co-chair for the UPECC here in Michigan and I would love to talk more if you do! Drop me an email. Thanks for sharing!

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  5. love it, LOVE it. To think outside the box (and inside the budget). A must-have skill for preschool teachers!

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