To Bee or Not to Bee:
Batik & Beyond continued from page 29
Draw the image, trace it on the fabric with pencil. More advanced kids could do layers of wax, but we only use wax once and then paint the next day. (This also keeps paintbrushes meant for paint away from paintbrushes intended for wax.) VENTILATE your room! The wax has a distinct artsy smell. When Kelly and I were both using wax all day, our entire hall smelled like molten hot lava wax. Also make sure you have time to warm up your wax, it can take about 30 minutes and keep your eyes and ears on it. If it gets too hot, it could catch on fire (it never did for us), but I had nightmares that I forgot to unplug my crockpots, so ALWAYS unplug your crockpots at the end of the day. CLICK HERE My other half Art TeachShameless YouTube Channel plug: er, Kelly King, is the technolAmazing SMArt Teachers ogy queen, so she made our instructional video. This is helpful, so that you can have a visual of the process. Draw the image with pencil on the fabric. The next step is to tape fabric onto laminated construction paper. Use wax anywhere you want white or where you want to show definition. To apply the wax, most of my students preferred using a paintbrush, but in our workshop, the teachers really liked the Tjantings. I suggest having them both as an option. The fabric
paint is like water and will travel on the fabric. Using the wax to keep paint from running away is also a good idea. Apply the wax with a paintbrush or Tjanting tool. The wax needs to penetrate the fabric to work as a resist—if it is too cool, it sits on top of the fabric, and the process won’t work. The next step is to paint. Dyna Flow paints are AMAZING. They mix beautifully and work like water colors. If you want the colors to be softer, add water. When everything is dry, sandwich the fabric between newspaper and iron the wax out. Ideally, you want to allow the wax and the paint to dry completely between stages. When you iron the wax out, the heat makes the dye colorfast, so you can safely wash the batik in the laundry. (Colorfast means dyed-in colors that will not fade or be washed out.) I hope this article and our video give you the confidence to try batik. Using exciting products and tools in the art room gets kids excited about art, and isn’t that what we are going for here? Thank you, FAEA, for allowing us to present, and thank you, FAEA members who came to our class at the conference. Please contact me if you have any questions: Heather Hagy at Sebastian Middle School, St. Augustine, FL. E-mail: heather.Hagy@stjohns.k12.fl.us; Social Media: Smartists904
Learning Objectives covered in this lesson: MAFS.K12.MP.5.1 Use appropriate tools strategically VA.68.F.1.2 Use creative risk-taking strategies learned from artists’ works to incorporate artistic solutions in the creation of new personal artworks. VA.68.S.3.1 Use two-dimensional or three-dimensional art materials and tools to understand the potential and limitations of each. VA.68.S.3.3 Demonstrate understanding of safety protocols for media, tools, processes, and techniques. VA.68.O.2.3 Create a work of personal art using various media to solve an open-ended artistic problem.
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Fresh Paint
Winter 2020