Warm & Cool Trees

Grade 6/7/8: Tape Resist Drawings

It was time for a one-class project, just before the Christmas break. Christmas – winter – pine trees?

I had a lot of narrow seam tape on my hands, so I put the two together. I gave each student a piece of cardstock, with directions to section it off side to side using the tape. Doing that, the resulting triangle would be their tree. Most of the tape lines would be diagonal, but I cautioned them to make the bottom line of the tree parallel with the bottom of the page.

Once they finished with the tape, I reviewed possible colour choices and materials. Warm vs. cool colours – the tree one and the background the opposite. I encouraged them to use a variety of materials: felt markers, pencil crayons, crayons, oil and chalk pastels, using more than one in some sections. They could also scratch through colour layers to get texture.

Then it was time to carefully remove the tape. In the process, some of the paper pulled up and we repaired that as best as possible. The resulting blurring of the white lines is okay, too.