Internal Texture

This is a project used to teach children about watercolor techniques and non-representational art. Non-representational is a style of art not intended to present an accurate depiction of the physical appearance of people or things. In this project you get to use FOOD! Yeah my favorite thing! You get to use food to have the children eat and then paint the texture and taste of what that food is. Fun way to mix senses. Word of caution though, if you are doing this is a variety of children make sure that you know what their food allergies are before getting food, send out a permission slip of sorts. I have weird dietary restrictions and this was hard for me because in our class we didn't do this and I couldn't eat over half the foods I was suppose to eat, thankfully we didn't have anyone with severe allergies because that would've been bad. So make sure to get food that will not hurt others!
Now onto the fun stuff, when you have the food gathered you can have the children eat while painting or eat before. I chose to eat while painting so I could get the correct description I wanted. Another option is to have the children divide out their watercolor paper into squares or let them mix their foods, I again chose the later because I thought that the flavors began to interact with each other in my mouth and tummy. Before you begin you can demonstrate what wet-on-wet watercolor techniques are, dry-on-dry, etc. Also you can show the effects of saran wrap on watercolor, salt and rubbing alcohol. But another purpose of this art assignment is to allow students to explore different techniques and learn new techniques on their own for watercolor. You can use this exploration in your critique and assessment to see what children went beyond the cookie cutter mold.

Above is my art project. I chose to have them all framed together to show what was going on in my tummy. And here is a list of what was in my tummy- a red chili pepper, blue footie candy, mint, chips and salsa, noodles and blue sugar ring. Now it is your turn to guess which is which. 

One critiques have children guess what food is which food in others works and talk about new watercolor techniques that they found. Here is a link to a tutorial on how to do this project atArt is an Adventure: Internal Textures- Water Color Techniques TUTORIAL...