Texture and the World Around You

The object for this art project is for the students to see, touch, and understand how to draw, paint and produce textures on any art project.

By Judy Braddy [Judy is an art educator at Azle High School in Azle Texas]

What You Need:

• A box
• Textures found around the home or room. Examples: rubber bands, clips, sandpaper, cloth, silk flowers, scissors, etc.
• Magazines, glue, and scissors
• Cardboard, glue, textures
• Printers ink, water based

What You Do:

Textures are all around us. We see them in nature, fur, whiskers, paw prints, we see them in the kitchen, and we see them in the playground. But how can you place them in an art project?

First, a child must know what it is and how to describe it. Let us make a TEXTURE BOX and make a game out of the learning. This is an ordinary box 10″ by 10″ or larger. Place into this box anything that can be described by the students, that has texture, size, weight, depth. The box has a hole in the side. The student takes his hand places it in the box, picks up and object and describes the object he is holding to the teacher or the adult or the class. Thus developing his verbal skills, and also his tactile skills. The class then guesses what the object is and the one that guesses is the next one to the box.

This leads to finding texture into magazines and a project call TEXTURE MAGAZINE MONTAGE. (Many students have trouble understanding that textures can also be seen as well as felt. Many students came to me and said “All the pages feel the same” For you see the eyes can detect textures as well as the hands. The Montage Magazine assignment helps develop eye and hand coordination. In this assignment the student is to cut out textures from the magazine and glue them on to an 12″ by 14″ sheet of paper. The textures can be objects, or animals or plants as long as a texture can be seen. This project stresses neatness, of glue and cutting and the covering and overlapping of the objects on the page.

From this project we go to a COLLAGRAPH PRINTING PROJECT with textures. Using the textures found in the box and other textures in the room these items will be cut and glued on to a picture on cardboard of problems in the environment. List them for the student and describe the problem in the eco system: Oil spills, fires, earthquakes, volcanoes, pollution of the world. Then draw the idea on cardboard and cut carefully and glue the texture down to the picture on the cardboard. They must have at least five different textures and no more then 1/4 inch high off the cardboard. Add glue to the top with a brush, this will hold the textures into place. Let dry one day. Then lay out newspaper on a table, the art work on the newspaper and the ink on a paper plate. Use a soft roller roll the ink over the textured collagraph. Place any type of paper on top of the collagraph and press with hands. Do not move the paper or you will get a double image. Lift the paper and you have a print of your collagraph. Mount the print on cardboard for display.