Soft Pastel Project for Kids

It is always such a pleasure to do creative activities with children - I love how inventive and bold they are.  A group of neighbours and our kids like to get together every set of school holidays and do an activity together.  They are always very willing to try out my latest art idea.  Even though I have been doing art for years, I only recently discovered 'frog tape'.  I would describe frog tape as top class masking tape.  It is a reliable barrier - and yet it comes off really easily from most papers.  

I came up with a simple project to use it, as you can see laid out above and below.  Use a strong coloured background paper - we used brown and grey as that is what I had available.  It is easier if it is A3 size.  Draw a very light sketch - in my case a sea horse - of something that would suit having lines or simple shapes blocked out.  You want to pick a subject that is naturally made up of sections.  Tear strips of frog tape and block out some sections of the background paper.  You could also block out shapes, like the circles on the seahorse's tummy. Then, using different colours of soft pastels, and colour in your drawing.  Encourage the children to experiment with blending them.

Once you are finished, spray fixative over it.  I use Winsor and Newton Fixative, which is widely available.  It is really important to do this, otherwise all the pastels will just continue to smudge.  Lift the frog tape to reveal the pristine paper below.  The fixative helps the colour blend more.  It is a good contrast with the clean edge of the paper.  If you have oil pastels - which are much stronger in colour than soft pastels - you can work over your image a bit more to create more detail - you can see I did an eye.

The kids came up with some great ideas.  You can see here a fantastic robot.  Note the diagonals down the legs and arms!

This turtle also looks brilliant.  The shell has been really well defined by the frog tape.  The legs and head have been beautifully blended.  It is always such a pleasure to get together with a group of children, and with a few simple materials, see the works of art they create.   These workshops with my neighbours are always great fun!