Saturday, July 21, 2012

Paper Mache Animals



 These were made during our Sculpting summer art workshop and students could make a teddy bear or any animal they choose.  They were made from a bread bag (you know, like the bag a loaf of bread comes in). We stuffed with newspaper and added features with wads of newspaper.  Then we used strips of paper mache over it.  Do not make the same mistake I did when I originally made the sample.  I cut the strips of newspaper instead of tearing them.  This created sharp edges that were difficult to smooth as you see in the example below, the silver bear.  He looks like he was made of duct tape. We painted them with acrylic paint and added embellishments like buttons and ribbon.  Some added a bow around the neck after I took these photos.  I love these and my favorite pictures are of the children's intent faces while they work (I did get permission from parents to post these photos).  Give this one a try...it is a winner!










Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Puppets from Paper Mache

Yay! Paper Mache!  I love doing paper mache and summer workshops are a great opportunity to work with it.  I worked with elementary students in our Sculpting Workshop and one of the projects was making these awesome hand puppets out of paper mache. This is definately one of my favorite projects of all time! See the full tutorial here: Art for Small Hands.



My example- Scrooge
Chef
 Students choose their own
cloth and cut out their hands and I
sewed them before they came the
next day.  Then they added all
the embellishments and made hats,
connected the tunic to the head, and
finished off the details. Excellent
work, students!
Puppy


I love him- she named him Blobbly Bobby



 I really love that I had a parent join the class.  Parents need time to create, too!  The kids put on a puppet show for us afterward!

Statue of Liberty








I had lots of fun with the elementary students in our Paint America Summer Workshop making these awesome Statue of Liberty paintings in watercolor.  Aren't they awesome?! We used metallic watercolor for the statues and Crayola Educational Watercolor for the rest of the painting.


Wolf Kahn

Towards the end of the school year, we studied the magnificent color field paintings of Wolf Kahn.  Color field painters want you to first see the color as the primary subject matter.  Although most color field painters work  non-objectively, Kahn does abstract landscapes.  I love how he keeps things simple and bounces/repeats the color from one color field to another.  Students created their own color field pastel paintings and here is some of their beautiful work.