You have the opportunity to be part of our Urban Junior Naturalists program from your own home. Today’s blogpost by Paulina Mohamed-Ocasio, Director of Youth Internships, brings the lesson directly to you.

What are nature prints? Nature Prints have been used for hundreds of years to capture the image of natural objects, like flowers, leaves, and even animal skin! There are several ways to do nature prints including rubbings. On today’s hike, Urban Junior Naturalists will look specifically at trees, leaves, seeds, and flowers and create rubbings. Rubbings will reveal to us the intricate details and uniqueness of each item.

Try it at home!

Take a walk along your favorite path, find a tree with an interesting bark. Take a closer look…closer…do you see the grooves? the furrows? What about that leaf? Do you see the patterns in its veins? Grab a white piece of paper and a dark colored crayon or charcoal and start rubbing and let’s find out!

Materials:

• Few white unlined sheets of white paper (standard printer paper is perfect)
• Crayons or pastels with the wrapper peeled off (select your favorite colors)
• Charcoal, if available

What to do?

Find a tree, a leaf, shell, or flower petals (anything that you can lay your paper on will work)

Take one white sheet of paper and lay it over the part you would like to take a print of.

Hold the paper with one hand and with the other hand take your crayon or charcoal and rub it over the paper. To get a darker deeper imprint, apply more pressure as you rub. Rub until you can clearly see the image imprinted on your paper. And that’s it!

Do as many prints as you want!

Quick Tip!  These make great gifts! Just add a frame!

Share your artwork with us and we will give you a shout on our Facebook and/or Instagram page! Take a picture of your artwork and email it to vcpalliance@gmail.com and let us know what your account handle is if you would like to be tagged!