Fun Kitchen Frottage

Kitchen Frottage

All you will need – Various textured kitchen utensils and crayons or lead pencil, and some paper!

Crayon rubbings, or frottage, is such a simple and interesting way to explore the often-overlooked objects and surfaces around the house. If you start looking for decorative and textured surfaces you will likely notice them everywhere…especially the kitchen! I discovered a surprising amount of decorative spoon handles in my cutlery draw, and as a fun exercise, beginning with lead pencil, started to explore how the metal spoons could be captured through frottage.

If you have never tried this technique before, then hold some A5 or A4 cartridge paper firmly over your utensil. Grab a dull lead pencil, or a coloured crayon, and with a medium pressure colour over the object to pick up on the surface textures. It can sometimes take some practice to get the correct pressure, and to ensure your object doesn’t shift too much.

My spoon handles worked pretty great, but I also noticed my colander, sieve, juicer, and steamer had some excellent patterns. It can be a bit awkward capturing these patterns from a curved surface, but that is perfect for honing the fine motor skills, and great for practicing problem solving. 

I decided those excellent patterns I captured reminded me of a sneaker, and so I have cut up my frottage artwork and collaged it into a cool sneaker design. I added a few final touches with some textas to bring the shoe to life.

How great would this be for a Pop Art project??

Some other objects you might like to try with frottage: Shoe soles, credit cards, decorative biscuits (oreos/malt-o-milk/custard creams) (which you can eat post rubbing- yum! ), jewellery pendants, coins, leaves…………hmmm what else could you possibly use??

Check out the original master of frottage – artist Max Ernst and his awesome piece ‘The Entire City’

Like this idea??

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Happy Holidays!! Woot hoot!

Tracy x