Our Collages are Out of This World!!

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My DragonWing Art students have been experimenting with various paint techniques, with the results being made into planets for colorful "out of this world" collages. 

We began by painting large (18x24") pieces of paper with black ink, leaving unpainted borders about the thickness of a ruler. We also used some glittery purple paint on the ink, to add some sparkle.  When dry, white paint was spattered on with a toothbrush, to make more stars in space.

On small sheets of white paper, we used liquid watercolors in several ways to achieve interesting surface texture.

We used the watercolors with salt, 

With saran wrap,

And with bubble wrap.

 plus liquid watercolor and shaving cream for marbling.

We also used bleeding tissue paper applied with water, removing the tissue paper when dry, to create colorful blends.

 And finally, we printed some papers with slices of pool noodles and tempera paint.

 Often, our hands ended up getting printed, too!

 All the papers that were created were used to make into planets and more for our collages. 

We used various bottles, caps, bowls, cd's, rolls of tape, and more as circle tracers for planets.

We used black crayons to add shadows to our planets to make them look round.  This was easy for some of the students, and more challenging for others.

 I showed the students how to cut rings for planets if they desired. 

 And the students began merrily cutting planets for their collages, to glue onto their painted and spattered background papers.

I gave the students strips of holographic contact paper, that they used to create fancy borders for their papers.

I also had strips of glow-in-the-dark contact paper, which was used on the sides of the collage pictured below.

 Finally, I also offered the students some glitter glue.  The bottles hadn't been used in a while, and the glue often squirted out in wonky and unexpected ways, but still, the sparkle really jazzes up the skies!

There are currently 5 students in my DragonWing Arts class; I unfortunately neglected to photograph one of the final collages.  I'll photograph it in a few days, and then add the pic to this post.  In the meantime, here's one last pic.