Thursday, November 7, 2019

8th Grade Neon Paintings


 In late July I attended and presented at the TAB KC summer conference. A couple of the ideas shared were drawing with India ink in bingo daubers and making neon artwork and letting it glow under a black light. These idea were a huge hit with my 8th graders!

Disclaimer: I used Amazon Associates to link to a couple of the products we used for this lesson. If you happen to purchase the items through my link, I may earn a small commission but it does not charge you any extra.



I set out some large pieces of drawing paper and let students practice with the bingo daubers before they started on their own paper. This let them get the feel for it and approach their drawings with confidence. It doesn't work very well to have students draw it out in pencil first since the tip on the daubers is much thicker than a pencil. They have to learn to loosen up and embrace and "mistakes" that happen. The bold outline also gives it a pop art feel.
I ordered some neon supplies off of Amazon. Others were purchased from my local Walmart.


Did yo know that not all white paper will glow under a black light? If this is important to you, check your paper before students begin so they know how to plan. Some of the paper I had glowed but not all. I never figured out the difference since the paper had been removed from the packaging long before. Our white paint also did not glow.
When students thought they were done painting, they put their work under the black light as a test. I put a black lightbulb in a small lamp and placed it in the kiln room so it would get dark enough to see.



Since I couldn't figure out a way to get a black light in the hallway we settled for a printed photo of the picture glowing under a black light so viewers could see the intention.

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