The Power of Positive Words

 This art lesson was presented by Mrs. Ellis, who is working on her art certification.  We looked at examples of beautiful, commissioned street art and compared and contrasted that with examples of vandalism including graffiti and "tagging".  There are some amazing fonts that have been developed, but Mrs. Ellis stressed the importance of having permission to make public art.  We brainstormed different positive words and everyone chose one and wrote it with a graffiti font on canvas paper.

 The next step was to outline it with Sharpie marker.

 Next, we covered our letters with masking tape and cut away the tape outside of each letter with an X-acto knife.

 The next part is really neat.  We taped together several crayons. The assignment was to choose several colors that were analogous, or next to one another on the color wheel.  Then we used a hair drier to melt the wax out of the crayons.

 The wax flows out of the crayon wraper and and mixes together in very interesting ways.

 When the wax dries, you remove the masking tape. Then the inside of the letters was decorated with acrylic paint.  Mrs. Ellis suggested using a complementary color, but if you had a really good reason, she let you use a different one.  The example above is her finished project.

I would say this lesson was a hit.  I think everyone was very pleased with their finished projects.