Flying pig construction for papier-mache

My pig "Daisy"

Flying pigs are coming to life!  Students in my after school program DragonWing Arts  have began construction of piggies in preparation for papier-mache.  (They have not yet sprouted wings.)

For those of you who struggle with papier-mache, plastic bag construction offers enormous flexibility, and it is ridiculously easy.  The pig is a great project for a first-timer, since a bread bag is not too big, and a great shape to work with.

First you stuff the bag with crunched up newspaper, one page at a time.   Even a smallish bag from a loaf of bread, such as we are using here, will take quite a few pieces of newspaper to fill, since you want it fairly firm.   When full, the end of the bag gets tied, rubber-banded, twist-tied, or taped (whatever works!)  You won't see that end on the piggies in these photos, since their snouts have been built over the taped bag ends. 

The piggie above looks like he's on the run, or perhaps his arms and legs are stretched out Superman-style.  After all, he will be flying!

Masking tape is used to shape the bag as desired.  For the pigs, that simply means taping in any corners, but if you were making, for example, a bug, you might want to tightly tape a 'waist' to separate body parts.  This process of taping bags was used  for other papier-mache student work I've shown you over the years.  Look at these posts to find a Laurel Burch style cat, and a frog (among other things) made by former students, and an assortment of critters made by me as samples, including a lizard found in  this post.

 The legs were each made from 1/2 toilet paper roll, and the snout was another portion of a toilet paper roll.  The ends were cut with a number of slashes to 'flower out' the end for handles for taping.  The kids were instructed to tape around them in a tick-tac-toe shape.   This holds it on the best.  Then additional tape was added as needed.  They were stuffed with newspaper and the ends were taped over.

The ears were cut from cereal box cardboard, though the piggie above does not yet have his ears attached.  We cut the ears bigger than needed, slashed them once and overlapped the parts to form a curve, and hot glued the overlap.  The bottoms were slashed once again to form tabs to attach them to the piggie.  All the slashing, folding, and taping is the reason you need to start with such a large ear shape!

We will be using cereal box cardboard to add the wings, after the piggie has been papier-mache'd.  This will make the papier-mache process go more quickly.   You can see some finished papier-mache flying pigs, made by my former 5th graders, here.   

Next week, my students will be embarking on gooey papier-mache, my personal favorite thing ever!  In the meantime, the pigs already have names such as Piggly Wigglebottom (which will probably change several times before completion).

By the way, I'm often asked why I don't like using balloons for papier-mache.  I've told the story here on the blog before, but here it is again:  My town has a HUGE annual hot air balloon festival every year, so one year we decided to start in the fall with papier-mache hot air balloons.  At the end of the day there were more than 40 wet projects on my windowsills, in my drying cabinet, and on the counter.  I was in school quite late that afternoon, all alone except for a custodian, when I heard gunshots.  Or at least that's what I thought.  One after another, the balloons starting popping.  I'm assuming it was due to an end of the day temperature change in the building, perhaps?  I nearly jumped out of my skin!  More than 1/2 the projects popped, and I spent about another hour, blowing up new balloons into each one of the collapsing art projects.  I absolutely NEVER want to do that again!!!!  Boy were my lungs tired!

 Has anyone else ever had a balloon experience like mine?

Followers, conventions, conferences, and random thoughts

As of this writing, I have 964 followers on my blog; I want to reach 1000!  If you told me, when I started this blog about three years ago, that I'd have this many people interested in reading my blog, I'd have said "yeah, that will happen when pigs fly!"  But, of course, an art room is a place where pigs DO fly!!

 When I do reach that magic 1000 followers, I plan some sort of giveaway to celebrate, so if you aren't yet a Google follower of this little old blog, please join yourself up!  Even though Google Reader isn't around any more, you can still see the blogs you follow and jump directly to them through the dashboard when you want.

Meanwhile, while I'm here writing, I'm wondering who is going to be at the NAEA convention in San Diego in March.  I'm not one that usually acts on a whim, but I'm considering making the trip.  Can you convince me it will be worth the cost for a retired teacher to fly clear across the country?  Zip!  Just like that!! 

dragon, grade 3

cat on flying carpet, grade K

grade 2 homage to Lichtenstein

Chuck Close at NAEA conference in NYC, 2012

While we are here talking about conventions, what about the upcoming online conference  I've seen so many of you posting about?  I wasn't planning to attend, since so much of it is geared toward the teacher working in a school, dealing with the issues and challenges that presents.  My teaching nowadays is a struggling-to-get-off-the-ground after school art enrichment program, with small classes and no concerns about assessments, evaluations, data collections, Common Core, and so on.  Our focus is simply on making art and enjoying the process of creativity.  Anyhow, are you attending?  Are you  teaching a session?  If so, how did that come about?  Tell me more!