Exploring Sgraffito Art with Kids (Art Studio Diaries #6)

sgraffito is a watercolour technique, simply put, it means scratching the surface before or after painting it to create a a design. It could be done on paper or canvas, but since I'm exploring it with little kids, I gave them a thick foam sheet each- so the scratches are more prominent than paper. 

Also, though the results will be more successful with watercolours, little kids tend to overlook a perfectly innocuous watercolour set and naturally gravitate toward dark, vibrant poster colors (tempera). So thats what was used. 

To scratch the foam sheet, I had laid out some objects with blunt edges: Toothpicks, Tangram pieces, Paper clips. You never know what they choose.

They did a bit of scratching: lines mostly and some hole punching too. They were done with it pretty quickly and moved on to painting. I'd laid out the sponge roller, sponge circle stamps along with brushes. 

Here's how it looked:

Even more paint:

Like I mentioned earlier, more success is likely with watercolours and the layers and layers of thick paint over the scratches didn't help the cause either!

Perhaps it was because it was their first time exploring this technique. For the second sheet I gave them, they weren't keen on scratching and directly moved on to painting!

Shall def try this again though! with watercolors :)

Looking for More Painting Techniques for Little Kids?

For Watercolor Masking Fluid | click here
For Vaseline Resist Art | click here
For Spray Painting to Create Silhouettes | click here

Until later! Stay in touch!

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