As an art project for grade two, I have decided to make scratch art! This is super exciting since I used to play with scratch art paper all the time when I was younger. What makes this more exciting than then, is that it is 100% made by me. For this assignment, I was inspired by this TikTok video:

@m_lowe_artroom

DIY Scratch Art (and more Keith Haring inspired art)! #art #artteacher #moodboost #happyathome #fyp #foryou #teachersoftiktok

♬ Lisztomania – Classixx Version – Phoenix

For this project, I used the following materials:

  • Watercolour paper
  • Black Paint (I used acrylic)
  • Dish soap
  • Multi-coloured Crayons
  • A paintbrush
  • A toothpick or skewer

As I’ve mentioned before, this activity was a lot of fun to do. I was able to choose the colours of the background and create a fun design.

My design before I painted the black on top!

I was really worried when I was painting over all of the crayons with black paint, I thought it would stick onto the crayon. But it didn’t and I managed to scratch it off. The scratching was smooth, although sometimes chunks wouldn’t come off, I just retraced the lines and the line turned out sharp and smooth.

My final result!

Some pros of this activity are:

  • Lots of fun to complete! Students will have a fun time designing the background colour and have just as much fun scraping off the black paint. It was so satisfying I almost found it hard to stop!
  • Easy to complete and not much mess. Of course with paint, there is some mess to be expected. However, with this activity, I didn’t find the paint getting everywhere. I am also not in grade two, so it might depend on the students in the class.
  • Smells better than regular paint. Since you need to mix the dish soap with the black paint, my room did not have the strong paint smell it typically gets when I paint. Instead, it smelled like dish soap!

 

Cons:

  • Instructions were unclear as to whether I should add multiple coats of black. I did not end up using more than one coat since I did not want to make the top layer too thick. However, if you look closely at my picture, you can see some of the colour peeking through.
  • While colouring with the crayons, I needed to press hard on the paper to ensure all of the holes were covered and there were no white spots. This ended up using the entire head of my crayons. If you have 30 students completing this activity, prepare for some used and broken crayons.

In the end, I would use this project in my classroom! It is a lot of fun to complete and can be used to teach colour, line, movement, and different artists easily within the classroom. There are not too many cons when it comes to this activity and it did not take a lot of energy to set-up!