Watermelon batik, 3rd grade

This is our second year making paper batiks featuring watermelons - it has been a very successful project and involves lots of fun steps. We began the lesson by making some thumbnail sketches of a variety of watermelon forms, and then we combined the forms together on a thick piece of drawing paper. Batik is a very old method of decorating fabric, and we can create the same look on paper using wax crayon and watery paint. It’s important to press hard when coloring to create a thick, waxy layer and then gently crinkling the paper to create cracks in the wax for the dye to sink into. Finally, we cover the paper with watery tempera and then rinse in the sink, revealing the texture of the cracks in the wax. Thank you to @artedallthetime for your inspiring Instagram post.