Scratch Drawing

Scratch drawing (or rainbow drawing as Lindsi calls it) was one of my favorite things to do as a child.  It was fun seeing all the unique pictures I could make.  It was also one of Lindsi’s favorite things to do.  You see, Lindsi was scheduling posts for next week when she happened to look at what I had scheduled for this week.  She called me up and said, “I think we have the same posts scheduled!  What is ‘scratch drawing?'”  When I told her she started laughing, “that’s the same as my ‘rainbow drawing’ I have scheduled for next week!”

Both Lindsi and I learned scratch drawing using just crayons (on the left above) but I recently saw some using crayons and paint (on the right above) and decided to give that a try with my girls too.

To do scratch drawing with your kids, you’ll need:

• White paper
• Crayons
• Dark paint or a black crayon
• Toothpicks, paper clips, a coin, or some other object for scratching

Have your kids color patches of color on the paper with the crayons.  Make sure they color dark and heavy.  Try not to leave many white spots.

Paint option:  Paint over the colored paper with dark paint.  Black works best but I couldn’t find our black paint so we used brown.  Any dark color will work as long as you paint thick enough so you can’t really see through it.  We used finger paints and they seemed to work just fine.

Make sure the paint is fully dry before moving on to the next step.  If your kids are impatient like mine are, you can use a hairdryer to help speed up the drying process.

Crayon option:  Color over the colored paper with a back crayon going over it once in one direction and once in the other direction.

Now let your kids have fun scratching through the paint or black crayon revealing colors underneath!  Use a toothpick, paper clip, coin, or anything you can find to scratch.  We happened to have some wooden skewers in the kitchen so that’s what we used.

Our conclusion:  Though both me and Lindsi are a fans of the crayon method because that’s what we grew up with, my girls liked the paint method better.  In the end, I have to admit, the paint method looked much cooler too!

Did you scratch draw when you were younger?  Did you use the paint or black crayon method?