Denise Fleming, a children’s book author and illustrator, creates many of her illustrations by “painting” with colorful paper pulp. Her work was the inspiration for students who were eager to apply skills they’d learned in a previous unit on basic papermaking.
While we didn’t have the materials that the artist used in her studio in this video, simply mixing colored copier paper with water in blenders allowed students to create whimsical “paintings.” We saved the colored pulp in clean, recycled water bottles, and soon many custom colors were developed.
Students used a couple of different methods to create their pulp paintings. In the first method, they carefully formed the “foreground” objects of their paintings on screens using teaspoons, eye droppers and palette knives.
These objects were carefully removed from the screen and allowed to dry overnight. The next day, students made a new sheet of paper in the background color of their choice, and placed the semi-dry foreground object onto the wet sheet. The separate layers merged together as the paper dried.
In the second method, students created the whole painting in one class period.
Finding something to use for black pulp was a challenge. Black construction paper bled onto the other colors and stained the blender. It was difficult to find magazine pages with black on both sides (to grind to pulp), and so some students decided to “collage” pieces cut from a magazine in order to achieve a true black color.
One of the things most fascinating and enjoyable about this project (from a teacher’s perspective) was the process and the trial and error experimentation that took place. Each student discovered something new that worked, and no one was afraid to make “mistakes” because–at worst–the pulp could be remixed and the painting started again.
The students’ paintings were displayed in the children’s section of our local library, along with copies of Ms. Fleming’s books.
