Sculpture from scrap cardboard!

Just before Thanksgiving, I returned from my NY state art teachers annual convention, a whirlwind weekend of learning, creating, presenting, engaging, and more.  While there, I presented two workshops; I'm going to tell you about one of them in this post, and I'll tell you more about the convention and the other workshop in another post.  The workshop I'm telling you about today was called From Scraps to 3-D Success, and I co-presented with a friend (pictured below). 

We each presented one project made mostly with recycled materials; my project was an abstract sculpture made entirely from cardboard and Elmer's Glue-All.  The photo at the top of this post, and the one directly below, are examples of these cardboard sculptures, made by participants during the workshop.

We began with 4"x 6" rectangles of cardboard, cut from shipping cartons. 

 I also provided a big bagful of random shapes of cardboard cut from shipping cartons.  All cutting was done on an old paper cutter to get straight edges. It works great, and is fast and easy to cut a lot.

 Participants were each given a Popsicle stick, to be used as a 'glue paintbrush', and little cups of Elmer's Glue-All to share with a neighbor.  However, when I do this project with students, I do NOT put the glue into cups; the students actually pour a little puddle of glue directly from the bottle onto their cardboard base, near to the corner.  This prevents them from using too much glue.  Using too much glue does not make the structures hold together better!  In fact, too much glue means it takes longer to set and therefore the sculptures are more difficult to construct.

The small cardboard pieces have at least one cut edge that has zigzaggy corrugation, and another edge where the cardboard is more like two parallel lines.  The zigzag edges will hold much better and I recommend using those edges for gluing/attaching when possible.  We scoop up a little glue with our pop sticks, paint it on the edge we plan to glue, and hold it in place where desired, counting AT LEAST to 10.  For more challenging structures, count higher.  While the glue does not dry totally in 10 seconds, this allows it to set enough for you to let go.  Usually I would have students glue a base structure in one class, and then add to the construction in their subsequent class. In this workshop, I had participants set their sculptures aside to work to the project offered by my co-presenter, and then come back to the cardboard sculpture to add more pieces. 

 Hold and count to 10!!

 It's possible to hold some crazily balanced pieces if you are patient!

 Note: the glue MUST be Elmer's Glue-All, which is very strong.  If you use Elmer's School Glue, the sculptures will collapse.  Don't bother to try; it will be a waste of time and your students will get frustrated when their work begins collapsing.

Some workshop participants had time to paint their little sculptures. One workshop participant said she was going to have her students paint large pieces of the cardboard in a 'painted paper' type of activity, BEFORE she cuts the cardboard for this project.  It could work great, if the cardboard doesn't warp too much.  I look forward to seeing her results.  Below, a participant painted hers a solid color.  Behind it is a piece of painted wood for the project that was presented by my co-presenter. 

And one gentleman got really inventive, cutting the shapes into curves, while leaving straight sides for gluing.  Ironically, this same guy attended a papier-mache workshop I taught years ago, and totally went in his own direction then, too!  I even mentioned him in a blog post about the workshop, HERE.

I've done this project many times over the years with my first graders.  We discuss what a sculpture is, and what it means to be abstract or non-objective.  Sometimes their sculptures turn out to look like castles or robots or airplanes etc and that is fine too!  We discuss that a person who makes a sculpture is a sculptor, and that they are all sculptors while doing this project! We look at photos of work by various artists, in particular Calder, but there are many others that can directly relate to this project, depending especially on how you intend to paint the finished products.

In the blog posts from 2011 and 2012 that you'll find HERE and HERE, you can see some examples of my first graders' cardboard sculptural creations using this process.  Here's a first grader working on his sculpture, paying attention to balance, and another first grade piece.

If you're looking for an easy, low-cost project that will work at almost any grade level, give this one a try!  Sculpture with kids is really fun! 

Work-in-progress

 My DragonWing Arts students currently have about 4 different projects in progress all at once!  We are having so much fun.  A week ago we painted a bunch of paper with acrylics, and this past week the painted papers were twisted and glued to become a 3-dimensional loom.  The 18x24" painted paper that we previously made, shown below, will be sliced (each child's paper has two different color and pattern schemes) and then woven into the 3D looms.  And then we will embellish!!!

Meanwhile,we have painted these awesome crazy liquid watercolor & salt skies over oil pastel planets (pictures below), for backgrounds we will be using for perspective cities, as I did with my fourth graders before I retired, and posted about, here. 

 

 Here's one of the cities in progress, by a 3rd grader.  She doesn't have her verticals correct on the buildings, but I don't want to overwhelm her, so I'm letting it go.

  My students are a mix of 3rd and 5th graders, and attend two different schools, and I have discovered a few things.  Not one of them has ever heard the word perspective before in art.  Never.  It doesn't surprise me with the 3rd graders, but it does with the 5th graders.  So I think whatever they are able to do is a pretty good first effort! 

And the students (both 3rd and 5th graders) who attend one school district have told me they have not used paint yet in art this year.  All they use is pencils and markers.  (Don't get me wrong; I like markers and pencils, but kids need to paint!)  And the student who goes to a different school district tells me her teacher tells them exactly what to do and they do it, leaving no room for creativity at all.  And this little girl has a fabulous imagination and loves to draw.  Her mother confirms what she has told me about art class, which was why she was very excited to send her daughter to my program.

I have told the moms who drop them off and pick them up not to worry that they aren't seeing artwork coming home with the kids yet; we are doing multi-step projects and they will have a lot to bring home at the end of our 7 week session.  The moms responded - "Are they having fun?"  The kids' answer - "YES!"  The moms then said that even if they never saw a single work of art come home, they'd be happy, since the kids are enjoying themselves, and since the kids aren't excited about their art classes in school.


I have made a commitment: I see them for an hour and a half, once a week, and at some point during that time each week, there will be painting.  The kids are happy; I am happy. 

So be patient - I promise to show you the end result when these projects are complete.

Name projects Part 1 - grade 5

I've started the school year with some quickie name projects, to get us up and running. Not much instruction to these lessons - the point was mostly to get the brain juices flowing and get the kids back into art mode after a summer off. My 5th graders stacked the letters of their names (or nickname) and thickened one side for a 3-dimensional effect, similar in spirit to the stacked shapes lesson of Tisha Smith at http://artwithmrssmith.blogspot.com/2010/08/stacked-shapes-op-art.html

Warm and Cool 3-D Cities!

My 3rd graders painted these totally awesome tempera 3-D cities! I'm so proud of them!!

We started out by drawing arrows pointing straight up, using a Sharpie marker without pre-drawing. No such thing as a mistake!

Then, to create the "3-D" buildings, the ends of the arrowheads were connected straight down to the bottom of the paper, or until they bumped into another building.

Finally we added our concentric circle skies, which is an idea I adopted from another blogger.

To paint them, we first used a palette of only warm colors and white, to create various colors and tints. The kids chose whether to use them for the buildings or the sky.

In our next art class, students were given just cool colors and white, to paint the opposite of what had been previously painted in warm colors.

For our third session, we finished any warm and cool colors not completed, and then used black paint to re-outline and add windows and doors. Some kids got the hang of slanting the window tops and bottoms along with the slant of the roof line, and others found this a bit more challenging. A number of kids will have to finish in their next art class. Good job 3rd graders!

*** I have tried.. and tried... and tried... to post 3 more photos of the most spectacular paintings in this batch that I really wanted you to see, all photographed at the same time, same camera settings, same everything, but each time I insert them, they show up SIDEWAYS. They were NOT rotated on the computer, and the camera was not rotated, so I am totally befuddled. Anyone have a clue why this might be happening? HELP!!

An Assortment of Papier-Mache Projects

Above is an assortment of papier-mache projects from the past couple of years, done by kids in grades 3 and 5. I get bored easily, so I like to change it up a little each year, rather than repeating the same project.

• The masks and tikis are from grade 3, as are the fish I posted last week. Another favorite of mine for the 3rd graders is Hopi Kachina dolls, using liquid dish detergent bottles and laundry detergent lids for heads for the basic armature. The tiki armature is a tennis ball container with a scoop of playground sand inside for weight. The mask armatures begin with paper lunch bags, stuffed with newspaper. We work on just one side of the stuffed bag, and when done, the stuffing is removed and the back of the bag is cut off. All of the projects use materials such as cereal box cardboard, cardboard tubes, bottlecaps, etc (and a lot of masking tape) for the features. Students are taught how to cut tabs for attaching, and the most effective ways to tape these features on before we use the "dog drool" (as our papier-mache is affectionately called).

• The bugs, cats, ocean critters, rain sticks, and more are from 5th grade (oh why can't I locate my photos of the fabulous pigs my students made?). With the exception of the rain sticks, the armatures are mostly formed from plastic bags such as those from assorted bread products, and plastic grocery bags (for the fat cats). The bags are stuffed with newspaper and squeezed and taped to shape, and then wire, cardboard tubes, cardboard, etc are added to create the features/details. The nice thing about this process, rather than working with a taped-up wad of newspaper as a basic armature, is that it dries more quickly because the goo can't seep into the bag.

• I know many people love to papier-mache over balloons. I've done it, but not since I had a major disaster. There is a hot air balloon festival in our region every fall, so it seemed like a great time to build hot air balloons in art class. We blew up balloons and put a coating of papier-mache over over them. I stayed in school late that afternoon catching up on some work, and suddenly, late in the afternoon, it sounded like gunshots were going off. I was alone on my hall, so for a moment I panicked. Then I realized that, evidently due to a change in temperature in my room, the balloons had started popping one-by-one, and I had to scurry to blow new balloons up inside of each of the couple dozen masses of oozing papier-mache. So no more balloon armatures for me!

• One last thing about my papier-mache process: To begin, my students tear up newspapers into approx 1" wide strips, tearing with the grain of the newspaper to make it easy. But here's where my process is different: While most folks have the kids dip the strips in the goo, then use fingers to "scissor-off" the excess paste, the kids tend to use way too much paste this way. I have my students dip their FINGERS in the goo, then rub it generously on their palms. They touch a newspaper strip to pick it up, and rub it between their palms until it is translucent or saturated (both good vocab words). Then they place the strip on the project and give it a massage. They love this. I have them massage the whole thing. This process makes sure you don't have huge oozing masses of goo that take weeks to dry, but insures that enough goo is in the paper to make it dry firmly and strongly. As stated in a previous post, I use "art paste" that comes in a little box and makes 4 quarts. Unlike wheat-based products, nobody will be allergic, it doesn't itch if it dries on your skin, and it can be stored indefinitely without going bad. Maybe it's not the strongest product available, but it certainly makes doing papier-mache with kids very easy!!
• If you'd like any further details about the how-to's on any of these various papier-mache structures, I'd be glad to respond. Let me know. The big thing is don't worry about storage, even if you don't have the proper art room. There's always a way to make it work. Cleanup is easy, and the kids are so engaged when doing papier-mache they are usually on best behavior. Don't let it scare you!!!