Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Paper Weaving: Beyond the Checkerboard Part 3

In Beyond the Checkerboard parts 2 and 3, I wrote about options for making paper weaving projects more interesting to students. Beyond the Checkerboard Part 1 was about stacking warp strips to make more interesting patterns. Beyond the Checkerboard Part 2 was about using weaving as a background by stamping or embellishing with collage. In Part 3, I will write about using paint to make paper weaving more interesting.
Two ways my students used paint to enhance their weaving efforts were to first paint paper and later weave with it, and to paint on top of woven paper. In the example above, the student had experimented with turning a leaf rubbing into a wax resist painting and wasn't satisfied with the result. She decided to use the wax resist painting as a paper loom.
Some students worked in several layers. The student working on the artwork above wove paper, painted on the weaving, then layered in more weft strips.
Students asked about making turkeys around Thanksgiving. There is a certain novelty involved with handprint turkeys but I always think of stereotypes of "hand turkeys and macaroni necklaces" so I just asked the students not to make a plain turkey if they were going to use their hands. I thought doing it on top of a paper weaving was a nice solution.

This student added translucent paint  over his tempera handprints on top of the paper weaving.
 Some students decided to add even more patterns to their weaving projects. The red, white, and blue weaving has stars added to it to make the American flag reference even more obvious. The other has doodles of hearts and stars added.

Well, that's all my paper weaving tricks for now. I think it could also be interesting to use magazine pages or something with more of an image as a paper loom. Have you or your students tried any other fun paper weaving techniques?

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