tissue paper | Mama Cormier

….getting papers ready for my Inspired by Lives and Letters class

Lendon Noe has encouraged us to make some art papers using inks, watercolour paper and tissue to use in future projects. I mixed up my walnut crystals to make walnut coloured ink and I experimented with purple and red ink.

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The next step is to cut up these papers into squares and rectangles.

On the white tissue paper I used three different techniques. One was crumpling up the paper and dipping it into ink. Using red ink gives it the appearance of blood (not sure if that was a wise choice). The second technique involved folding the paper multiple times until it couldn’t be folded anymore and then dipping the edges into ink. The last method involved folding the paper like a fan and then running a water soluble ink pen down over the folds. All these techniques involved spraying the paper with some water. Not too much or the paper falls apart.

….I introduced four different art projects this week

I had to think quickly this week as to what I was going to teach in art. I ordered some supplies before Christmas and they hadn’t come in yet so I scrambled to find a project(s) that required the materials I had on hand. Of all the projects that I assigned I think the one I introduced to my grade 3 class is my favourite so far.

We talked about landscapes and reviewed the components: foreground, background and horizon line. I demonstrated how to tear the tissue and overlap the colours to give the picture more depth. I then explained that once the tissue layer was complete we were going to cut out shapes from construction paper, magazines and art papers that we had created last year to create a foreground of flowers.

In the first class most of the students only finished gluing down the tissue paper. In the next class they will cut out their shapes from different materials, glue them into place and then using a fine tip black marker they will add detail to their cut outs and add some line drawings behind their collaged flowers.

I had lots of art books and posters to demonstrate the technique and show a variety of flowers that they could draw. I didn’t want everyone to gravitate to the blue tissue for their sky so I read them Peter Reynolds new book Sky Colour. It’s a wonderful book that every teacher who teaches art should have in their library. All my classes loved the book and took the message to heart. Very few chose a solid blue for their sky colour.

I started a sample with the children as they worked so that they could visualize what I had in mind. I think that the process is more important than the product and I find giving them a sample to look at helps them better understand the process. No two pictures are ever the same.

Today I finished my sample at home. The first picture shows the tissue in the background and the simple cut outs that are glued on top. In the second picture you can see a close-up of the detail that I drew in after with a fine tip black Sharpie and the third picture is the entire finished piece.