Starch Art

“Art made from Starch?”  Last week Friday, My class and I had to make art with starch made from corn.  I know it sounds weird but I was very excited.  It was a new technique for me to make art.

To make the art, we had to draw a sketch of the New Zealand landscape.  I chose a picture with a mountain in it because I liked how the sun was behind the mountain.  We then had to go to the hall so the starch could be made.  The starch was made from corn powder and hot water.  

I then had to set up tables so everyone could take a seat and make their starch art.  When the starch was finished, everyone who had a sketch done was allowed to put starch on it.  When the starch was put on my art, it was still hot so I could see steam coming from it.  From the way the starch looked, I would say it looked like goo.  

I also had to put dye on my art so the teachers put dye on the starch to rub.  Rubbing my hands on the starch felt rather nice.  It was soft, gooey and also warm so my fingers were relaxed.  I had to rub my hands on the art where the starch was placed.  There also was a problem where if you leave the starch on your artwork for a long time, it would get cold and hard.  We had to put different colours on the art so what we had to do was wash our hands in a bin filled with water.  Imagine that!  It was cleaned so I didn’t worry.

With the art done and looking nice, we had to leave the artwork in our classrooms until Monday.  Before we did that, we had to carefully carry the art with newspaper to the classroom.  I was a little bit worried because the wind was trying to make my art fly away like someone was trying to steal it.  

When I went back on Monday to check on my artwork, it looked great.  I had to remove from the newspaper and that was quite hard.  The art got stuck on the newspaper like it was like glued on.  It was hard because the art ripped a tiny bit so I had to make sure there were no rips.