Soap Resist Creative Method

Later this month, I will be presenting at the Georgia Art Education Association Spring Conference. I am extremely excited to be teaching a new art method I learned about eighteen months ago from one of my graduate school cohort members. My bud claims that her undergraduate art professor taught the method to her. The method? Soap Resist.

I've searched all over the internets for examples of Soap Resist Art, but have turned up pretty much empty-handed. If you come across something, send it to me! In some ways, this is super exciting to me because it means that it is a relatively new method!

I'm going to share it with you today! And, I've written three lesson plans (elementary, middle, and high) for the Soap Resist method. These lesson adhere to the Georgia Performance Standards, but I'm 100% sure you could slightly modify the lessons to suit your teaching needs!

My students LOVE soap resist, and they achieve incredible results with it!

Materials Needed:

- Plain bar-based soap (ivory is my choice)

- Black Canson Paper (any non-bleed black paper will work)

- Prismacolor Art Stix (experiment with other materials!)

- Water with sink or other soaking tray

- Pencil for sketching

- Xacto blade or knife for cutting soap

Creative Steps:

1. Lightly sketch out design on black Canson paper in pencil. Some pencil lines may show if drawn too dark.

2. Cut soap into manageable pieces for drawing. May want to use the Xacto blade to carve a fine tip for drawing.

3. Draw with soap on top of pencil sketch lines. Gently rub the soap back and forth as you draw so the soap line is “waxy.” All soap lines will wash out totally black.

4. Color in your image with Prismacolor Art Stix. Layer the color to achieve desired effects.

5. Run water into sink or tray until there is enough to cover paper. Soak paper in water or tray and gently rub against the drawing with your bare hand. Some of the drawing will brush away.

6. Once all of the soap is removed from the paper allow to dry and your soap-resist drawing is complete!

Possible Project Applications:

- Georgia O’Keefe florals. Students of all ages can enjoy this project.

- Hands. Advanced drawing students can achieve profound effects with soap resist while drawing hands.

- Political Awareness. Advanced drawing students can use the bold lines of soap resist to outline political agendas.

- Portraits. Because of the heavy dark lines provided with the resist, advanced art students can work on shading for portraits while still maintaining a contour-line outline.

- Shading Abstraction. Students of all ages can work on shading while drawing an abstract artwork.

- Positive/Negative Space. Students of all ages can learn more about positive and negative space by turning what is initially positive space into negative space.

Pre-Written Lesson Plans

-2nd Grade: Georiga O'Keefe Flowers Using the Soap Resist Method. Click for downloadable version on a link

- 7th Grade: Soap Resist: Monochromatic Still Life. Click for downloadable version on link.

- High School Visual Arts: Emotional Hands Using the Soap Resist Method. Click for downloadable version on link

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Click below for a more easily printed version of Soap Resist Directions

Enjoy!