Monday, December 11, 2017

Sgraffito Hippie Bus in Oil Pastel


This was a project I did two years ago. It was our final project before summer break.

  
A 60's Hippie Bus is reminiscent of happy, peaceful summer days and going off on warm, care-free holiday. We listened to the Beatles and Beach Boys for that added care-free atmosphere. This was a lesson in symmetrical drawing (look at those symmetrical busses!) and patterns (repetition, equal size and placement). We also learned the ancient graphics and decoration technique "Sgraffito", which in Italian means to "scratch", in which a top layer of paint (in this case oil pastel) is scratched away (with toothpicks and chop sticks) to reveal an under coat of a different color. Yes, this means we colored everything twice, and we had to think carefully about which top color to put on the bottom color, in order to get maximum contrast once we scratched into it.
We scratched our names into the license places, because really, is there a better place for our signatures? Once complete, we glazed our art with a coat of protective acrylic medium for added shine and protection. 
Our little hands were hurting from all the heavy coloring and finely detailed scratching, but the hard work was well worth the effort. These lively busses sent us off into the summer with happy hearts and adventurous spirits! 

This lesson was inspired by the teacher over at Arte a Scuola. See her blog post  here.

8-11 year olds
7-10 year olds
10 year old student
7 year old student