Oak!

Trees are in incredible resource for artists. In addition to being a fun subject matter they are a great source of art materials.

I always introduce my Kindergarten students to the trees on their playground early in the year, and return to them throughout the year.  We observe the way they change and start discovering some of the gifts the trees give us.
We start with leaf rubbings (which is a great time to demonstrate dealing with mistakes á la Beautiful Oops).

Recently we went to look at the oak trees we have on campus. We happen to have several variety of oak, including several that are always full of oak galls. The leaves, bark, acorns and galls of oak trees are rich in tannins and have been used by artists to tan hides or make ink. After looking carefully the students notice a wide variety of colors and sizes of oak galls. I explain that the seeds of oak trees are called acorns, but that oak galls are more like a house (or apartment building) that the oak tree builds for an insect. I also mention that they start green, which is when the insects move in, and reassure them that usually the galls don’t fall off the tree until the insects move out (so they don’t worry about the insects they might find).

We selected a few leaves and searched a little so see if any oak galls were lying on the ground, and then returned to the art room, where I had a bowl of previously collected oak galls. I passed a few around to examine while I used a hammer to crush a couple into smaller pieces. I put them into a heatproof pyrex bowl and poured in hot water. The water turns a light brown, at which point I bring over a pot with previously boiled oak gall water, which is a richer brown and demonstrate painting oak leaves and a tree (as well as writing the word oak). I encourage them to look at their leaves while they do a little painting with the oak gall ink.

The next time they came to class I talked to them about the metal iron, which is a mineral from the earth. I showed them a jar of nails, which had made rusty water, and iron supplements. I crushed up a few iron tablets, which are white inside and pointed out that the outside color was just something to make them easier to swallow. We then combined the iron tablets and the rusty water with some oak gall ink, which turned a dark charcoal color. I explained that this was a recipe a lot of people had used historically (including Leonardo daVinci). They then went to their tables and painted whatever they wanted with both of the inks that we had made from oak galls.