King Tut Pastel Resist

One of my all time favorite techniques is oil pastel resist.  It never fails, always amazes the kids, and produces fantastic results.




I've been taking an Ancient Civilizations history class as inspiration and although there is lots of great material to pull from I couldn't resist trying it on the nemes headdress, which is the striped cloth worn by the pharaohs.

King Tutankhamen's golden mask is probably one of the most well known representation.












MATERIALS REQUIRED:

- brown kraft paper
- reference photos
- pencil and eraser
- oil pastels
- blue disk tempera paint
- black paper for mounting
- white paper
- black and blue sharpie or felt marker
- red and turquoise colored/painted paper
- glue
- gold acrylic paint
- a few jewel embellishments

PROCEDURE:

Take a piece of brown kraft paper.  Using a reference photo draw an outline of the mask.

Take yellow oil pastels and start to fill in the lines on the nemes. 

You want the lines vertical on the top of the headdress, horizontal on the sides.

The Pharaoh's also wore elaborate collars. This is represented in the golden mask as well.  Make these lines curved along the neckline.

Taking blue disk tempera paint, paint over the oil pastel.

On white paper draw out the face and neck.

Paint in the face and neck with gold acrylic paint or yellow tempera.

I like to add yellow acrylic to my gold acrylic paint to brighten it up a bit.  I also find most metallic acrylic paint to be quite translucent these days.  By adding yellow or brown to gold, white or grey to silver, and orange or brown to copper you will brighten that color and make it more opaque.

Paint some extra gold while you are at it for the cobra and vulture heads at the top of the headdress.


Cut out the headdress from the kraft paper.

Cut out the head and neck from the gold painted paper.  Glue into place on the headdress.





Using the black oil pastel add some shading to the face and neck.  Put in a chin line, shade the cowl around the neck, put in the nose and the lips.

On a scrap of white paper trace out the eyes in pencil.  Outline them with blue sharpie or felt marker. Put the pupil in with black pastel.  You want the pupil to touch the top of the blue outline.

Cut out and glue into place.

Using the black sharpie or marker add heavy brows as well as some eyeliner.


You could also use black paint here if you wish.

Take some red and turquoise paper.  This could be cardstock, scrapbooking paper or better yet some painted paper.

Using the extra gold paper make the vulture head and the cobra for the top of the headdress.  Add the mosaic (inlay) to the collar as well.  Add the braided false beard on the chin.  In the gold mask it appears to be quite blue/ almost mauve.

Add a few jewels for embellishment if you wish.

Mount on to black paper.  You can also add a few gold touches with leftover paint if you wish.

That's it.


Have a great weekend everyone and I'll see you next week.