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!

Number Grids

Students painted first using two of the colors from the triad they selected

after the base coat dried, let the dry brushing begin...

I love how she had meaningful letters and numbers

This one has a hidden word when upside down!

Superb brushwork!

We are studying the iconic images of Jasper Johns.  I just love how he shows the process of the materials he uses, so painterly and handcrafted.  Students are creating their own number grid (some are using letters as well) and are learning about using a triadic color scheme.  We spend time also in this lesson talking about caring for your paintbrushes, which to me is an important lesson in itself.

Students drew a grid on tag board with a ruler...didn't have to be perfect but somewhat evenly spaced. They cut out numbers from craft foam to glue onto their grid in any order they preferred.  I could have bought the numbers ready made from foam, but I prefer them hand-cut.  They glued them on the grid in one class.  Next class was about painting and learning to use the dry-brush technique.  They caught on very quickly and created these beautiful pieces of work.  This was done with grades 3 thru 12. Excellent results and lots of fun! Thank you to Art Projects for Kids for the wonderful idea.  I do prefer the hand-cut look of the numbers out of foam.