Dinosaur Fossils

This is a fun art project, particularly if you teach a dinosaur unit. It's a simple wax-resist technique which is *supposed* to mimic the look of dinosaur fossils revealed in an archaeological dig.

Grade 3 students started off by looking through books and doing research on laptops to find 

a skeleton image of a dinosaur they wanted to draw. Draw this skeleton on white paper. 

I demonstrated on the board how it's helpful to start with the head, then sketch in the neck/backbone/vertebrae, then onto the hip bone and tail, then finally adding the arms and legs.

Once the drawing is finished, color in all the bones with a white wax crayon or white oil pastel.

Press nice and hard.

I pre-mixed up a large batch of watered down 'dirt' colored tempera paint. 

Basically brown tempera with a touch of black in it. I like to mix up a bunch of different shades of brown so the students' artwork has some variety.

It's super helpful to do a test batch of paint beforehand to figure out how runny or watered-down the paint needs to be. Too thick and it will just cover over the skeleton completely.

Then paint over the dinosaur skeleton. 

Blot off paint from the skeleton with a tissue, if necessary.

Ta da!