Frescoes

Today was our extra art class. During our studies at co-op, we don't have time to incorporate any extras like hands on projects. So, I invited the other families in the co-op to come to our house for a Friday class. Our first one dealt with frescoes. The actual process of creating a fresco involved several layers of plaster before actually painting. In the interest of time, we did only one layer of plaster and our painting.

The ceramic tiles, soaked over night and ready for plaster and painting.

Our supplies: Plaster, plastic thingy for spreading the plaster (see, I use real technical terms here, so try to keep up), paints, assorted brushes, paper plates (aka Palates), cups for watering down the paint, water, and craft sticks that I cut to be used as a stylus.

My subjects: (L-R) Gabriel, Ruth (what is she doing with her face?), Isaiah, and Grace (la de dah, let's get the show on the road)

Ruth spreading her plaster.

Grace spreading her plaster. I took the picture, then I had to take the (technical term coming here) plastic thingy away from her because she was just crazy spreading.

Thinning out the paints. Frescoes require water color painting and since I didn't really have water colors, I used my other paint and watered it down.

The next step after spreading plaster and watering down paint was to take a stylus and make a really light design on the plaster so that you could have a basic outline of the picture. This didn't work because the kids kept gouging the plaster instead of lightly tracing, so we ended that and moved on to painting.

Ruth, carefully mixing that perfect shade of pink.

Grace and Isaiah. Have you noticed that those two are peas in a pod? I think every time there is a photo of Isaiah on my blog, Grace is right there with him. She tells me he is her best friend.

Grace's finished fresco. She got bored fast, hence the lack of color...oh and bottom right is a dog.

Ruth's fresco. She really got into it, mixing paints and working long after everyone else had finished.

My fresco. I gave it my best shot, too. I have to say, it was way harder than it looked. The plaster soaked up the paint and you really had to plan out your picture because once a drop of paint hit, it was in to stay. I have read that as the plaster dries, the colors will become more bold with it taking up to about 6 months. I'll have to tuck them away and revisit them this summer to see how they look.