Peacock Batiks and Journal Pages

I recently did these peacock batiks with Grade 3.  It ties into social studies where they are learning about India.  The peacock is the national bird of India.



We used lots of bright colours.

Now if you don't want to do a batik you can also create amazing peacocks in the art journal using painted papers.






















MATERIALS REQUIRED:

Batik:
- fabric, regular white cotton muslin works great
- pencil
- wax paper
- reference photos of peacock
- Elmer's clear gel glue
- acrylic paint in a variety of colours
- fabric markers, glitter paint, metallic paint to embellish

Art Journal:
- art journal or background paper
- heavy paper for painting
- disk tempera in bright colours
- glue
- markers, glitter, acrylic paint for adding details

PROCEDURE:

Batik:

Cut your fabric to your desired size.

Lay down some wax paper onto your work surface.  Put the fabric on top of the wax paper.

You can add some tape if you need to hold the fabric in place.

With your pencil draw out your peacock directly onto the fabric.

I asked the kids draw a large enough peacock to fill the space.

Use your Elmer's gel glue and go over your pencil lines.
Sometimes my students find it hard on the hands to squeeze the glue out of the bottle so I'll put some in a little cup and they use a paintbrush.

Go over every line as well as whatever part of the design that you want to stay white.


Keeping the fabric flat let dry.

Paint the peacock using acrylic paint mixed with a bit of water. The water helps the paint flow a bit better making it easier to paint the fabric.

Paint the entire piece of fabric so no white is showing. You can go right over the glue lines.



Let the fabric dry. Now you need to remove the glue. Place the fabric in the sink and let it soak in some hot water.
After 1/2 an hour or so give it a bit of scrub and rinse.

Let dry.

The batik is done but if you want you can add extra sparkle using glitter and metallic paints.

I used the paint to add details to the feathers.


That's it for the batik.  You can make it into a banner, placemat or even a pillow case.




Art Journal:

You need to paint a few papers for the peacock.
First I painted a paper for the body.  I choose blue and green.

I then painted 1/2 of a paper purple and magenta.  The other half I painted yellow.

I painted my background page a nice rich orange.  In fact it was already painted using leftover paint from the batik.


On the back of the paper I painted earlier I drew out my peacock body.
I cut it out.  Save the scraps in case you need them later when making feathers for the peacock.

I had this leftover piece of blue painted paper so I drew out the shape of my feathers.


Cut it out.

I cut strips from the purple and magenta paper and added them to the feathers.


I also added circles form the leftover body paper and yellow paper.  Glue into place on the background and then add body shape.  I cut legs and a beak out of the yellow paper.

I added paint, pencil crayon, marker, and glitter paint to further embellish my peacock.

That's all for now.

Gail