Masking Tape Silhouettes

It has been FAR too long since my last update. I have been so incredibly busy at my new school and unfortunately I'm really not having too many opportunities to create art with the students. HOWEVER, that all changed this week as it's Rokeby's Arts Week! I was asked to lead a couple of sessions with the year 3 boys and quite quickly I thought of a project that would do the job perfectly: my masking tape silhouettes. I did these a while ago in art club on paper and the results were great. Luckily, I was able to give each boy a canvas this time around so I feel the results were even better and allows them to look after them for a much longer time.

Step 1
First of all, I took side-profile pictures of each of the boys before the sessions.

Step 2
The boys then cut out their side-profile picture and painted it black

Step 3
I gave each boy their canvas whilst the silhouette was drying. I showed them how the masking tape could be used to create patterns in the background. We talked through about using the tape 'randomly' but also to make patterns like grids, flags, trees etc. I stressed the importance of going across the canvas and smoothing it down so that paint couldn't seep in.

Step 4
The boys were then instructed to fill in the sections that they had created. They were advised to use one colour per section. It was up to them how many colours they used but they had to make sure they filled up all of the space and didn't go under the tape.

Step 5
When the paint was dry, the boys peeled off their masking tape carefully to reveal the beautifully clean white lines underneath. If any drops had seeped through we covered them with oil pastels or white paint.

Step 6
They then had to stick the silhouette onto their canvas. They were encouraged to try out different compositions and then glue it down once they were happy. After this, they could use black markers to write words to describe themselves or things that they liked to do.They could also do little illustrations in the sections. After that, they used bright oil pastels for extra patterns and decorations. Some of the boys were very creative with their decorations as you will see below!

Here are just a small handful of our results:

Fantastic work, Year 3. Well done!

~DB.