Surrealist Scratchboards

After learning about the Surrealist art movement, students created these vibrant Surreal worlds using handmade scratchboards. We started by coloring a board with oil pastels. The entire space needs to be colored in or else the paint will stick to the board and the scratching will not work. I encourage students to color in lines and to switch off their colors as much as possible. Next, the board is painted over with black tempera paint with a little dish soap added. Once the board is dry, students attached a magazine cutout of a person to the front of the board. Then, students were able to create a vibrantly colored world of their own creation! I gave students the option of scratching out a landscape or to just include intricate patterns and designs. This is a project I do every semester because all students love the results!