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Teaching artist Adjoa Burrowes demonstrates how to create different colored paints using spices and food, and how to use those paints to create patterns and designs.

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Collage—A type of visual art in which different materials are combined to create a new piece of art.
• Pattern—A design where lines, shapes, or colors repeat. 

Materials You Will Need:

• Flour
• Water
• Bowls
• A spoon
• A fork
• Newspaper or cloth
• White or colored construction paper
• Paint brushes
• Colorful spices, such as cinnamon or turmeric, or colorful food, such as beets or spinach

How to Create a Work of Art with Food and Spices

1. Once you’ve gathered your materials, spread out newspaper over the table to protect your work surface.
2. Next, you’re going to add three tablespoons of flour to three tablespoons of warm water to create a paste. If it’s too thick, you can thin it out by adding more water (the paste should be about the consistency of pancake batter). If you want to work with a few different spices, make a bowl of paste for each spice.
3. Shake some of the different spices you’ll be working with into the separate bowls of paste and mix to incorporate. 
4. Now, experiment with creating different patterns with the paints you’ve made! You can use the brushes, as well as the fork and any other tools you have, to create different shapes and patterns.

5. Next, experiment with creating paints from vegetables. Choose some colorful vegetables (for instance, spinach or beets), chop them up, and mix them with water to create different colored paints. 
6. Now you can create shapes and patterns with these paints the same way you did with the pastes you made from the spices! You can also experiment with painting on different materials like newsprint or brown paper bags.

In this video, Adjoa shows us how to create artwork with paints made from spices and vegetables. If you want to go even further, think about these questions: 

• Does the paint look different depending on what kind of paper you paint on? How does it look on white paper, versus newspaper, versus a brown paper bag?
• At the beginning of the video, Adjoa shows some of her artwork where she cut shapes from painted paper and attached them to other paper. Can you experiment with this kind of art? What new pictures can you create by cutting shapes from one piece of painted paper and adding them to another?
• What other kinds of foods and spices can you use to create paints besides the ones used in the video? What about strawberries, or blackberries, or cumin?
• What other tools could you use to create different shapes and patterns on the paper besides paint brushes and forks? Can you try other kinds of utensils, or sponges, or even your fingers?

Accessibility

Don’t forget that you can turn on “Closed Captioning” to view the YouTube video with English captions.

More about the Teaching Artist

Adjoa J. Burrowes (she/her) is a mixed-media artist, children’s book author and illustrator, and an art educator. Painted papers are one of the many art forms in her creative toolbox. She resides and maintains an art studio in Northern Virginia, in the D.C. metropolitan area, and is a member of the visual art faculty at Flint Hill School, where she teaches kindergarten through fourth grade. She is a recent recipient of a Denbo Fellowship from Pyramid Atlantic Art Center and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

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