Art Activity: Snake Sculptures

Here's an activity I did with my second graders that turned out really well. The kids loved it and the snake sculptures turned out great. The images are of my own samples, but the kids' projects are way better, of course. We watched a little snipped of the jungle book and then looked at some pictures of snakes to get ideas, and then we started making our sculptures!
First we used tin foil to make an armature for the snake. I cut a long narrow piece of foil for each kid and they crumpled them into a long snake, pinched them to shape and then bent them around to make a snake pose.
Next, we wrapped the tin foil armatures in plaster bandages. It only took one layer of bandages to get a good solid sculpture.
Once the plaster bandages dried, we painted the snakes with patterns. This took the kids a couple classes because they were painting so carefully! When they are all painted and dried we're going to mod podge them to seal the paint.

Adventures in Tie Dye

Today we made tie-dyed t-shirts with the 6th graders at school. Believe it or not, these shirts were dyed with house paint! To do it, you just mix a little house paint with a lot of water and put it in a bottle to squeeze it out (we used plastic drink bottles with holes punched in the lids) You twist and rubber band the shirts just like you would for normal tie-dying, then squeeze on the the color on, squoosh it in, and voila! Then you just let the shirt dry completely (it will be crunchy) wash and dry and you have a beautiful tie dye t-shirt. I was really surprised how soft it turned out after it was washed. My cooperating teacher tells me she has been using this method for years and the shirts really hold up well. It's a lot easier to do with kids than real tie dying with reactive dyes and such, since you don't have to soak the shirts and the paints are really easy to use. We had a great time and the kids shirts look great!

Before and After

Before

After

I did a fun activity with the kindergartners today using primary colored finger paint and plastic combs to make textures. I was anticipating messiness so I took my camera along to capture the wonder of the before and after. I mixed up the fingerpaint myself with that clear "elephant snot" paper mache paste and tempera paint. It works great but It's messy!

More Adventures in Papermaking

I got to try making paper in one of my art education classes last year, and since then I've been wanting to try it again at home. Winter break is the perfect time to do projects and make huge messes in my kitchen, so I decided to go for it.
I used recycled scraps of paper this time (mostly junk mail and brown bag paper), tore them up and soaked them in water, then pureed them in the blender. Then I dumped the pulp into a sink of water, and used a homemade frame to pull sheets of paper. I made the frame out of old stretcher bars, stapled on some window screen and covered the edges in duct tape. Once I had a nice even layer of pulp on the screen, I let the water drain off and then squeezed out the extra water by laying the frame paper side down on a towel and blotting the back with a sponge.
Basically I figured out what I wanted to, which is that you can easily make paper out of scrap. I think this would be a great way to use up scrap construction paper in an art classroom- you would just have to sort it by color so you wouldn't end up with mud. I also learned that if you use brown paper bag to make recycled handmade paper, you end up with something resembling institutional brown paper towels. Like the kind from school bathrooms. I bet the results would be a lot more fun using a mix of coordinating colors of construction paper.

Things I learned today

Today I went to a nearby elementary school to do an art project for their earth day family event. They wanted something using recycled materials, so I had an idea to make stepping stones using soda and water bottle caps as for mosaic decoration. I got my mom to help me out, which was a good thing, because I don't think I could have handled it myself.
So, here's what we did: We used pizza boxes with the tops cut off for the molds, lined with plastic grocery bags. My mom and I mixed up the concrete and poured it into the molds, and then when it was ready to go we had the kids add the decorations. Unfortunately, we had far fewer bottle caps than I had expected, so we ran out right away, and had to scrounge around for odds and ends to add to the stepping stones. It was a lot of leaves, sticks, and pine cones, which I'm hoping will leave impressions in the concrete when it dries, a lot of rocks, and some strange bits and pieces that the kids found lying around- some golf balls, pencils, even a tiny baby doll leg. So the last few stones were a little, shall we say, surreal?
Anyway- this is what I learned today:
-Pizza boxes make great stepping stone molds
-50 lbs of concrete makes about 3 12" square stepping stones.
-If you want a lot of bottle caps for a project, make sure you have a lot yourself. If other people bring more, that's a nice bonus.
-Kids are really good at finding strange things in the woods.
-As long as the kids have fun, the project was a success.

Papermaking!

The other day we made paper in one of my art ed classes, and while the paper i made is not particularly attractive, it was a lot of fun to do!
The teacher had set up big tubs, and we tore up little bits of paper and put them in a blender with water to make pulp, then poured it into the big tubs. Then we took window screens stretched over frames and pulled them through the pulp to pick up a layer of paper. At this point all you really have is a bunch of wet pulp sitting on a screen, but once you remove the excess water with a shop vac or sponge, it starts to look like a sheet of paper. While the paper is still wet you can shape it in a form to make a little bowl, which I think is really cool even though my bowl is particularly ugly. Either way, once the paper dries you have a totally usable, albeit somewhat lumpy piece of paper.
Anyway, I think it would be a really fun to do this with an elementary class. I think I would use recycled bits of paper to make the pulp instead of buying the special linter paper to start with. I think the activity makes a lot more sense if you use it as a way to take unusable scraps and make them into something usable.
I have to decide what to do with my little pieces of paper- maybe I'll try watercolor on them.

High School Art Day

High school art day is now officially over. After all the weeks of preparation, the day itself went really fast! I roped my Fiance into helping me out, which was a good thing because it was kind of a crazy day. We got to school early in the morning so we could prepare for my artist trading card activity. We got our first visitors soon after we were done setting up, and at first it was pretty mellow, but instead of people coming and going as I had expected, the ones who came earliest just stayed, so the number of people in the room kept increasing. I had Justin directing traffic, while I tried to answer questions and keep things from getting too messy. I was very pleased to have such a good turnout and I saw a lot of people making really cool trading cards. Then when the activity time slot was over, we had to clean up fast and run down to the gallery, where we had about an hour and a half to tear down the high school art show and pack everything up so the teachers could come and pick it up.

It was definitely a hectic day, but it was a lot of fun!

High School Art Show Ready To Go

We finally finished putting together the art show for high school art day today. It took many hours of work by many students, so its very satisfying to see it done. I think it looks great! Some of the work done by high school students is just amazing.

High School Art Day

Every year my college has a "high school art day" event. Local high schools submit artwork to be juried for an art show, and then on high school art day itself we have art activities and awards for winning student work.
Today was the first day of drop off for student artwork. I helped out with it for just a little while this afternoon, and I was really impressed with the quality of some of the work. We'll be having lots more work coming, and then the jurors pick the work that goes in the show and we install it. This is all happening within the next few days. I think it's a good opportunity, because as art education students we tend to spend a lot more time around elementary kids in volunteer work and such.
Should be fun!