5th grade Amate Bark Painting

Last year the other art teacher in our school did this lesson with a 3rd grade class using neon paint.  After the lesson was complete I noticed that a lot of the details got lost because of how small the students drew their designs.  The paint just wasn't the appropriate medium for such tiny detailed images and so this year I decided to bump the project up to 5th grade and and instead of paint use neon chalk pastels.

  I gave each table a reference packet of sheets with birds, various flora, lizards, and designs to use as inspiration.  Students tore the edges of the paper to give it a hand-made look and then drew compositions based on a few images I showed them in a Powerpoint.  They then outlined their drawing in Sharpie and then colored everything in.  I gave them Q-tips to blend the tiny areas of their paper and warned them of over-blending the chalks (making the color dull).  Overall they did a great job and there is just something very striking about neon colors on brown paper mounted on black.  These are pretty large too, about 14x18" so they are quite striking!