Outer Space Resist Paintings

4th grade artists have been exploring value through various pencil drawings. After their personal still life drawings, students have been exploring value using color through outer space drawings with oil pastel.

We discussed how to create three-dimensional shapes and forms using lighter and darker values of color, turning a circle into a spherical planet. After brainstorming a list of things you might see in outer space, including the Earth, sun, planets, stars, black holes, comets and asteroids, students began with a sketch.

After sketching out their composition quickly, students drew their outer space scenes on larger paper and used oil pastel to add color and depth.

The following class, students created a resist by painting over their paper with black watercolor paint, which revealed their oil pastel stars and outer space scene since oil pastel resists the water based paint. 

Here are some examples of our out of this world outer space resist paintings!

Ava, 4th Grade

Vicky, 4th Grade

Derin, 4th Grade

Kailee, 4th Grade

Anthony, 4th Grade

Kira, 4th Grade