Art Journal Prompt #6

Cardboard Rubbings

© Jennifer Hollowell

Mar 28, 2007

Don't throw those pieces of cardboard away from empty food boxes or any other boxed item you collect from time to time during regular household use.


This week's art journal prompt revolves around cardboard. It's always a good idea to recycle materials gathered in our homes from regular household use, so why not incorporate these items into art projects?

Here's what you need:

  • your art journal
  • crayons, pastels, chalks and (or) charcoals
  • glue stick
  • collage materials
  • empty food boxes

Here's what we're going to do:

  1. open your art journal to a blank page spread
  2. tear your empty food boxes up into chunks
  3. place the torn pieces under the empty pages
  4. using your "coloring tool" choice from the options above, rub your pages so the cardboard pieces show through (similar to doing a leaf rubbing)
  5. remove the cardboard piecs and tear half of them into smaller pieces
  6. add the smaller pieces of cardboard to your pages using the glue stick
  7. taking your coloring tools again, choose alternative colors and rub over the cardboard pieces
  8. add collage elements

Try doing this method on a series of page spreads and experiment with:

  • colors: shades, shades, etc.
  • patterns: create light rubbings on some parts of the page and create harsher rubbings on other parts of the page
  • use a minimal amount of collage elements
  • use heavy layers of collage elements
  • paint your cardboard pieces, rather than using your coloring tools
  • do rubbings of your collage elements, rather than affixing them all to the pages

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