To paint fresco means to paint on fresh, moist plaster with pigments dissolved in water. I changed it up a bit for many reasons. The biggest reason I found is that little kids will push a paintbrush right through wet plaster. So, we painted on mostly dry plaster with tempera paints. They turned out great!There are many brands of plaster. I got a big bucket at Michael's. Check the ratio. Mine was about 2 cups plaster to one cup water. Mix, mix, mix! I poured the plaster into these red plastic solo plates that I found at walmart. They were pretty deep and in a nice shape. Give them a few taps to remove air bubbles.
You can see this painted fresco in the plate here.
This plate also made it easy for the fresco to pop out of when completely dry. It begins to harden right away setting up pretty good in 15 minutes and hard in 30 minutes depending on several factors. I would say leave them in molds for at least 4 hours to be completely hard.
We were trying to focus on Venice using the new exhibition as inspiration, but sometimes we just want to paint what we want! :) Here are some of our wonderful creations made at Drop in Art by children of all ages.
You will need:
-plaster of paris, water, measuring cup, disposable mixing bowls and disposable mixing utensils.
-solo plates
-paintbrushes
-tempera paints
This one is popped out of mold:
7 comments:
Fabulous idea!
This sounds like a great project. Do you think it would be nuts to try it with a large class??
I love this idea! I would love to use it for my little art class... May I post about your site on mine?
Anya, Thank you!
Christie, well...I think it depends. If you had a drill mixer and could mix one large batch of plaster and pour it might be do-able. Or, depending on your personal time if it was something you really wanted to take on you could demo mixing one batch for the class and have the rest ready to go-complete at home or somewhere the night before. I'm sorry that doesn't help much!
Debra- I would love for you to share this! Thank you!
Erin - Thanks for your response. I had a feeling it was a bit beyond my resources for a large group. I do want to try it with a small group one of these days, though!!
Hi Erin,
I linked to your cool fresco project (and also your sand-casted sculpture project) on http://dollarstoremom.com - I hope that's okay. Let me know if not.
Another option would be to take a week and divide the class into 4 or 5 groups of smaller kiddos. Each day a group works on a specific art task. One of the tasks is the fresco. Now you’re working with a smaller group of kids and yet they are all getting exposure to the greatness of a fresco! The other 3 or 4 groups are still working just on a different task or assignment for that day. Stations come in handy with large groups and allows smaller group interaction for more time consuming or direction specific tasks. Just a thought...
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