Vellum painting
A few of our gallery artists have been working on vellum paper and the translucent nature of the paper has intrigued our students. Here is a little project which I dreamed up to let them have a go at working with vellum. The students ages were ages 6-9 and it worked very well with them. I gave them each two pieces of vellum. One was for the background and one was for the foreground. First they used a pencil to draw the background and then put the second piece of paper ontop to make the foreground drawing. When they got the look they wanted, we used india ink and a brush for the background. On the second piece of paper they used oil pastel for the “up close parts” When the background was dry they used oil pastel on the parts they wanted to “stand out”.
Once the drawing was done, we glued the background around the edges to a piece of foam core with a glue stick. The foreground paper was placed on top with the edges glued down to the background piece. The edges tend to roll with the glue so it is good to have a heavy object to weight them down during drying time.
They enjoyed this project more than I would have imagined and we also were able to sneek in some ideas of implied perspective with landscapes!
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December 8th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
I find vellum hard to work with. I think it is because I like to glue everything with Mod Podge which makes the vellum all wrinkly.
I wish these pictures were bigger to see more details.
Very cool idea.
December 8th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
This is a great idea — will have to try it. Is there a type of glue that works better than others?
December 9th, 2006 at 12:10 am
I agree with Melba- I’m a teacher and artist and both with my students and my own work- I have never been able to use Vellum in collage ‘cus it wrinkles- though i love the neocolor on vellum effect! And the India ink didn’t wrinkle it either? what kind of vellum are you using!?!
Also- I’ve done a project where you draw a regular picture, and then staple a picture on transparent paper on the front of it- but you curve the ‘background picture’ so that it looks like a 1/2 circle, and keep the transparent flat. . .essentially making the whole thing a 1/2 circle- so that it shows depth. . .It’s a great way to teach kids about foreground and background.
Thanks for the post!
December 9th, 2006 at 2:02 am
Can we see a finished product?
December 9th, 2006 at 9:36 am
If you use too much wet of anything vellum will wrinkle for sure! Sometimes that can work for you though (in adding texture) and other times it can drive you crazy.
The india ink didn’t wrinkle the vellum much at all as they used small brushes and used the ink for outlines, with the craypas oil pastels adding depth and color -
I used a medium weight (not the super thin type) vellum from a local office supply shop. The glue is the permanant glue stick type - not a wet glue and it doesn’t need too much to stick well… just dot around the edges. .
love your idea katherine of the staples and the curve. very cooI and i will definitely be trying that one out! I will snap a photo of the final pieces tomorrow and add them in here. sorry about that!