Monet's Japanese Bridge painting in acrylic and melted crayon

The Monet exhibition has just finished in Melbourne. It was wonderful!!  I've been wanting to do a Monet inspired painting all year yet decided to leave it until now to maximise the number of children who would have seen the exhibition first.  It was very inspirational.

I've been debating about how to go about this painting for a while.  I decided to do it in three steps to maximise the thickness of paint and ensure the children took their time.

Week One - Paint background

Week Two - Paint water lilies, trees, pond and bridge

Week Three - Melted crayon added to further impressionist effect

Close up of the melted crayon - so pretty!

What you need:

• Canvas board (I used boards so the paint could be added thickly)
• Acrylic paints
• Brayers, rollers, old cards, paint effect tools, bubble wrap etc (really anything you can think of that creates good effects)
• Paintbrushes in various sizes
• Crayons
• Wax Paper
• Iron (or Hairdryer)
• Mini graters (purchased cheaply from Kmart)

How to:

Week one:

• Hand out the canvas boards and a sheet of plastic (I used cheap Ikea chopping boards yet plastic dividers would also work well).
• Put a squirt of blue, yellow and green/ aqua paint on the sheet of plastic.
• Ask the children to put the paint on their canvas with the brayers, credit cards etc by rolling/scraping them in the paint on their plastic then onto the canvas.  Tell them we are looking for a mottled look with all colours showing.  They could use the bubble wrap and other paint effect tools for this as well.  The idea was just to enjoy the process of making a fun mottled looking background. They found this part LOTS of FUN!

Week Two:

• Demonstrate how to draw a bridge and then get the children to paint in their bridge.
• Demonstrate a dabbing technique and get them to paint in flowers, water lilies and trees.

Week Three:

• Hand out mini graters and crayons
• Ask the children to grate crayon onto their paintings (they can move the shavings around with their fingers).
• When they are happy with their arrangement, cover with wax paper and melt crayon with a hair dryer or iron (I did this step for them).
• Peel off the wax paper to reveal the final masterpiece.

The Results:

I love how these turned out! These were done by children aged 5 to 9 years.  It was a great exercise as the children learnt:

1) How to apply paint without a brush
2) How to use an impressionist dabbing technique to add flowers and foliage
3) Mixed Media technique by adding melted crayon for another effect

Cheers

Fiona