Art for a Snowy Day

I have loved doing resist art since I was in the 2nd grade and we made crayon and water color resist pieces to go with our unit study on oceans. (Resist means that the wax of the crayon will repel the water color away from it. There are other mediums of resist art as well, but simple crayon and watercolor is the cheapest and handiest.) When I saw That Artist Woman's January Pocket Project, it reminded me that it had been too long since the last resist art project I did with my kids, so I took a cue from her snowflake ATC for a project of our own.

First, though, we read Snowflake Bentley, one of my favorite picture books. I read it to them every winter because I think Bentley is inspiring and I hope that just once my kids will catch his passion and dedication to something he loved and believed in and internalize it.

(If it is snowing outside the day you do this, bundle up and take some black paper outside with you to catch snowflakes on. Bring a magnifying glass and see the amazing intricacy of snowflakes for yourself. Kids love this!)

Then I read a few scientific paragraphs out of The Snowflake:  Winter's Secret Beauty, but mostly we looked at the amazing photographs and talked about shape and symmetry. We then used the photographs of real snowflakes to guide us in our art.

Step 1:  Draw snowflakes on white paper with a white crayon. It's tricky to see what you're doing, but if you push hard with the crayon and use the light right, you can see where you've drawn. We used regular printing paper, but you could also use other white paper. Try to copy the 6-sided or hexagonal pattern most often found in snowflakes, and make them symmetrical, but make each one you draw different from all the others, just the way nature does it.

Step 2:  Using blue water color, paint over the entire paper. Your snowflakes will resist the paint and "pop" out at you.

Step 3:  Let it all dry out.

Step 4:  Embellish. We all used a silver Sharpie marker to add some sparkle, just making dots with it. I just put dots on the blue background, while my kids put dots on their snowflakes. I glued shimmery sequins to the center of my snowflakes.

Step 5:  Add a cardstock backing to stabilize, frame, and finish your masterpiece.

Step 6:  Display!