Layered Look Pastels

Chalk with Monoprint
This allows some experimentation time with chalks, but keeps the project small and manageable. Most children love fingerpaint, so incorporating it is a nice addition.

Materials:
1/4 sheets of construction paper (white or colored)
Chalk Pastel Colors
Dark Paint (finger paint or acrylic)
optional: combs to texture the paint
Tray or cookie sheet

Procedure:
Using Quarter sheets of paper, color with chalk colors over the entire surface. Blocks of color/swirls/squiggles, ordered geometric shapes or random scribble, separate colors or overwriting with different colors...What ever they do is fine, but this isn’t the time for a detailed drawing since we are going to cover part of it with paint.
Set your chalk drawing aside and squirt a small amount of paint (about the size of a quarter) onto a tray.
Smear paint onto an area of the tray roughly the size and shape of your chalked paper.
Design with fingers, scrapers, etc. leaving a lot of open (paint-free) space.
Place paper, chalked side down, on the paint design pressing lightly to print. Lift and see the great design!

Tips/Suggestions
Using colored paper eliminates white space, even for children who can’t or don’t want to color the whole paper.
Try different color combinations. I liked the brown paper and brown paint. Try other dark papers with the same dark paint. Bright colors, like yellow paper with black paint look nice too.
Don’t feel that you have to completely cover the construction paper in chalk. A little of the paper color coming through just creates a more complex-looking design with little work.



Expanding this Lesson
*I've had a number of people say that these look like animal fur prints. I imagine if they were done soley in animal colors the effect would be even better. I'm thinking jungle scene collage...

*On subsequent sessions as your students are interested, introduce blending colors, shading, cross-hatching and stippling.

Finishing:
Since the chalks will be subject to smearing, you can laminate/cover with contact paper for protection. A light spritzing of hairspray also helps keep the chalks from dusting off the paper, though of course, it’s not as much protection as the contact paper.