This is a fun project that teaches the students a process and results in some cool effects. The finished product combines a painterly, organic visual ground with hard-edged, organic shapes that come to the front.
It is important to note that this works great with some finger paints, but other brands don't work at all. We need a finger paint that stays wet for some time.
After I show the students a sample, they cut out shapes for their project. In one of the samples below, a student has used the four shapes from playing cards.
They set those shapes aside. The student uses one of the warm colors of finger paint (or a combination of yellow, red, and orange) to cover an entire piece of paper. Then the student places the shapes down into the finger paint in an arrangement or composition that he or she likes. In the next step, the student finger paints over everything with a cool color (or with a combination of green, blue, and violet). The greater the value difference between the warm and cool colors, the better the effect. Finally, the student carefully lifts off the shapes to reveal the unadulterated warm colors beneath.
Pulling up the shapes can be the hardest part. You will notice little fingernail marks in the pieces below where the student or teacher struggled to grasp the edges of the shapes. If you use the wrong kind of finger paint, the shapes won't peel off.
This one has my signature on it, so it must have been a demo.
Depending upon your choices, the result can be very graphic or very subtle. Look at those zig-zags the student put in.
This student uses analogous and complementary colors. The orange and pink on the left are more subtle than the contrasting violet and pink on the right. That makes for a wonderful effect. On the left, the yellow is separated from the orange and on the right, the blue is separated from the violet, giving us some visual mixing. Note how the student worked back into the piece after lifting the shapes: there is a spiral that cuts through the whole composition. It looks like there may be two layers, and the bottom layer had dried enough not to be impacted by that spiral. Did the student add the pink back on top? It's hard, on these, sometimes, to tell exactly what the student did, which is pretty cool.
This is a really good color combination. You have to be careful what colors you let the students use first and second. Starting with a primary is good if you add a secondary on top, but adding orange to red won't work. Adding orange to yellow might be subtle, too. That's why I suggest going warm to cool. Here, though, blue to violet works really well. You could make some samples of what works and doesn't work.
