Fall Leaf Art with the Scratch Art Technique

If you follow me on Instagram, you know how much I am loving the first of the Autumn leaves.

Love, love, love.

Spring will always be my favorite season, but fall is a close second. Partly because of all the amazing colors and patterns in the leaves around me.

Don’t get me wrong. We still have mostly green here in Asheville, North Carolina, like most of the U.S.

But I’m seeing more and more leaves changing colors on my walks.

The colors of Autumn…

A photo posted by Jean Van’t Hul (@jeanvanthul) on Sep 12, 2015 at 4:29pm PDT

Reds, oranges, yellows, browns.

Each autumn leaf is a work of art—a tiny canvas worthy of framing.

But! I’m getting carried away.

Here’s a leaf art project we did the other day, inspired by some of the beautiful fall leaves we had collected.

Fall Leaf Art with Scratch Art Paper

MATERIALS

• Sturdy paper (we used ultimate art paper)
• Oil pastels
• Paint (we were all out of the black BioColor paint we usually use so tried metallic purple this time; tempera would work as well)
• Foam brush
• Toothpicks and/or Q-tips

INSTRUCTIONS

1. First we covered paper with oil pastel drawings until the entire sheet was full of color. 

Then, I cut each 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper into four sections. Just ’cause it took us a while to fill those with color and to give us more pieces of scratch art paper.

2. Then we painted over the oil pastel with a layer of the metallic purple BioColor paint.

Not convinced purple belongs in the Autumn palette?

We’ve been finding lots of lovely purple around us lately.

3. Finally, we scratched our autumn leaf designs through the surface of the wet paint with toothpicks and Q-tips.

Aren’t these pretty?

Maia drew jack-o-lanterns with her toothpick, rather than leaves.

And both kids did some abstract art.

By the way, if you want more tips and tricks on making your own scratch art papers, check out my post on DIY Scratch Art the Easy Way.

But wait! There’s more!

I really wanted to try this fall leaf art with black, to see how it would look, so we also decided to try a scratch art technique I saw on Babble Dabble Do recently. We layered black oil pastel over the colored oil pastel.

This definitely took more time and muscle power than a quick coat of paint and Daphne asked me to help do her black layer.

But once it was on, she had fun scratching out an Autumn picture with a tree and jack-o’-lanterns while I drew leaves and acorns on my own scratch art paper.

I recommend you make some fall leaf art with scratch art paper! If you make your own scratch art papers, you can focus on autumnal colors (even purple!) or if you want to use pre-made scratch art paper, that works too.

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