Supplies:

• Colored pencils
• Baby oil
• Q-tips
• 18″ x 12″ drawing paper

Every year, all of my classes participate in the Safe City contest. This year, I decided to have my students focus on the Element of Texture during this project. They could choose to work from the theme of bullying, cyber-bullying, family violence, or suicide.

Before we started, I had them practice creating three different types of texture using colored pencil. They created different values using hatching, scumbling, and smooth blending. I did a demonstration of how to smooth colored pencil by using a small amount of baby oil on a Q-tip.

Almost every student chose to focus on the smooth texture for their poster. I put the baby oil into baby food jars with a small piece of folded up paper towel at the bottom, which helped them to only get a little bit of oil on their Q-tip.

After doing this contest for four years, I was ready to approach it from a different angle. I had students who had done the Safe City contest in Elementary and Middle school.  Focusing on incorporating text into their artwork helped them to come up with new, fresh ideas. The poster that they are required to use is fairly large (24″ X 17″); being able to use words and images made the space less daunting.