I totally stole this lesson from Andrea Slusarski, my favorite teacher from Colorado. You should read about her lesson here.
Basically, it’s a matter of painting, adding tape, painting more, adding more tape, and on and on. At the end, the tape is removed to reveal the layered designs. It’s simple, but very, very cool. We painted on cardboard, I adapted my lesson to fit my current semester of students, and it went like this:
Our layers:
- Base Coat
- Monochrome–any subject, but a wide variety of values
- Nature or Landscape
- Texture
- Black and White, possibly incorporating writing (song lyrics, poem, book passage, etc.)
- Choice
With all of our projects, we have a 5-objective, 5-point rubric we use to grade, and the objectives are individualized to each project. Here’s what my kids and I came up with for these paintings:
- A wide variety of subjects and techniques
- Purposeful designs created with tape
- Appealing color scheme
- Precise lines created by tape
- Precise lines used when painting
They had a blast personalizing, coming up with concepts and themes that continued from layer to layer, and of course seeing the results when it came time to take off tape.
eastartroom 
missslu
/ May 12, 2014these all turned out great! I cannot wait to repeat this project next year, many students on my “end of the year” survey voted it their favorite painting project!