DragonWing Arts Students 'Discover' Treasure!

Our theme for the fall DragonWing Arts session was Discover!  My five students (two 3rd graders, one 4th grader, one 5th grader, and one 6th grader) did three projects - the first was the creation of a treasure map.

And the second was a papier-mache project.  (I'll tell you about the third project later.)  I asked the kids what they'd like to build with papier-mache - perhaps a newly 'discovered' creature, a box of buried treasure, something from outer space, a discovery under the microscope or deep in the sea, etc.  My five students unanimously said "We want to make TREASURE CHESTS!"  So we did.

We began by constructing the boxes and their curved covers, out of cardboard (from shipping cartons).  We covered them with a coat of papier-mache, and when dried, we gave them a base coat of black acrylic.

The students painted their treasure chests and bedazzled them with some jewels.  They used a colorful air-dry clay and made some tentacles and such to be emerging from the their treasure chests, and also added felt and more jewels and strings of beads as desired.  We cut 'hinges' out of sparkly felt and such, and I hot glued them together for the kids.  I think they came out great!

For the treasure maps, I had experimented with dark brews of tea and coffee to stain the paper, but it just didn't 'take' the way I wanted, so we used liquid watercolors.  I mixed brown with green, with orange, with  yellow, and with black, and after they had torn the edges of their paper, they painted them with the watercolors, blotting and wetting as desired to get the effect they wanted. They discovered that dripping water on the papers looked really cool.

 The kids learned how to make a simple 'compass rose', and also how to make a scroll for a key on their maps.  I printed out sheets of typical map symbols and then let them go to work making their maps truly their own inventions. The started with pencil, and then used a combination of fine-tip black markers and India ink with dip pens.  They loved working with the pen and ink!!  Afterward they used tiny amounts of red, white, and gold acrylic ink to embellish.

Somehow I forgot to take pics of the third project, so here's some more views of the treasure chests! 

Sunshine Collages

Tomorrow I'm headed to Binghamton NY for my state art teacher's convention where I'll be teaching a couple of workshops. I'll be be blogging about it in the coming week, but here's something else in the meantime. 

Last April I blogged here about how my DragonWing Arts students had made painted paper in warm and cool colors, to use in some sunshine collages we were making.  I never posted the finished products.  As it was, we ran out of time and had to take some short cuts in putting together the final pieces, but I still liked them a lot. I almost forgot to take pics, so I shot these in a hurry in very poor lighting. 

The kids had designed patterns on tracing paper for their suns, and were using them with their painted paper to cut and put together like puzzles.  But their ideas were WAY too complicated, so in the end, with no time left, we ditched the patterns, threw caution to the wind, and just started cutting and assembling!

 It was a challenge, but the kids were enthusiastic nevertheless!

 Here are the (somewhat) completed pieces.

 

 

The aftermath!

We've got some really fabulous new projects my students are working on now.  I'll be telling you more about them in the coming month, when the artwork is completed.  Now, I'd better go finish packing!!!  Hope to see some of you in Binghamton!

Colorful Leafless Trees!

My DragonWing Arts students recently completed these paintings of trees.  We began with this simple method: 

First, draw a land line, dividing ground and sky.  

Second, draw a trunk that extends from land line to top of paper.  

Third, add branches coming from the trunk, extending to the edges of the paper.  More smaller branches could be added coming from these branches.   

Details could be added as desired.  Some of the girls decided they should have branches that were shaped like hearts.  And of course they wanted to add swings, too!  I left these decisions up to them.  

When the drawings were done, painting began.  The kids each selected two colors to use to paint their skies, mixing as desired.  

In the pic on the right below, you can see the the student making use of an 'ugly sponge' when mixing colors.  We use these for keeping paintbrushes clean with minimal water.  The excess paint is wiped off the brush onto the sponge, and the brush can then be dipped into the other color the student is using.  When changing to a completely different pair of colors, the brush is first wiped on the ugly sponge, then washed in the water, and then wiped again on the sponge to remove excess moisture.  The paints stay exceptionally clean with this method!

 

Then another two colors were selected to paint the ground, and finally, another two colors were used for the tree itself.  White could be used as desired, and other colors were used for various details. 

 

When the paint was dry, some of the kids chose to use black Sharpies to outline and make their colors 'pop'. 

Originally, the plan was to add a few leaves as desired, cutting them from sheets of colored foam, adding vein lines with Sharpies, and gluing onto the trees or ground.  We ran out of time, so the trees stayed leafless!  I think they look great!

Creating crazy colorful papers for collage

Here's the beginnings of new project with some fun preparatory steps!  Last week, my DragonWing Arts students painted large sheets of paper with black ink, and then painted over it as desired with a glittery paint.  These are going to become the backgrounds for colorful outer space collages.  We will also be splattering them with some white and silver paint, to create galaxies of stars. 

 So this week's task was to create some colorfully textured papers that can be cut into planets, or any other celestial object desired!  We did these several ways, using liquid watercolors and watercolor paper.  The technique used for the papers pictured in the photo at the top of this post was bubble-wrap printing.  The students wet their papers with a big brush, and then painted them with saturated colors.  Then, a piece of bubble wrap was placed on the wet paint, and some cardboard was placed on top to keep it in place as it dried.  Above are the results when dry. Yes, somehow I have purple bubble wrap!  The color has absolutely no function.  It's just pretty!

A similar process was used for the papers below, but instead of bubble wrap, students used crunched up pieces of wax paper and plastic wrap.  I love the color choices they made - there's paper created for an ice planet, and another for a fiery planet, and so on.

Students then saturated another piece of paper with wet watercolors and sprinkled them with salt. We used a mix of table salt and kosher salt.  The results, pictured below, are really lovely. 

 This one looks like it could be the earth!

Here's a couple more gorgeous closeups!

Finally, the students tried out shaving cream printing.  If you've never done this before, it is easy and messy, but its the kind of mess that cleans up easily.  Each student spread out some shaving cream on a tray.  They dripped liquid watercolors into the shaving cream, and swirled the colors with a fork or a pointy wooden stick. 

Then a piece of paper was pressed into the shaving cream, and the paper was squeegeed off afterward to remove excess shaving cream.  We used pop sticks today, but a rectangle of cardboard is also a great squeegee for this method.

 It's going to be fun to use all these papers to make our planets. If we have time, we will try some other techniques for even more planet paper!  Stay tuned...  we are working on a couple of other projects as well, so you won't be seeing the results for a few more weeks.

Rizzi-Inspired Papier-Mache Vehicles!

In DragonWing Arts, our theme for the fall was "Let's Get Moving!", and I developed a brand-new papier-mache project, building a prototype to make sure it was going to work. Above is the that prototype.

I introduced my small class to the charming work of James Rizzi.  I don't always have internet access, so I purchased a Rizzi calendar and shared his work with my students through the images on the calendar.  We especially noted the goofy vehicles with passengers and drivers with big smiles, wide eyes, and lots of personality.  And birds, too!  We noted the black outlines on all the bright colors.  And the students set out to make their own happy goofy vehicles.

They began with an assortment of boxes and other odds and ends.  Students taped parts together to create the basic desired shape of their vehicle, (and tested them with CDs to see how they'd look with wheels).   

Then they were covered with a couple of coats of papier-mache.

Meanwhile, CDs were decorated with colored Sharpies to become happy wheels, and we determined wheel placement on the vehicles.  I marked the location of the centers of the wheels and used a drill to cut holes for axles (wooden dowels).

Students painted a coat of gesso on the dry papier-mache.  The bright white gesso makes paint colors show up more brightly, essential for the James Rizzi theme.

Then, the vehicles were painted with cheerful colors.  

When the paint dried, we used oil-based paint markers to add people in the windows, and to outline the people and the areas of color on the vehicles with black.  The wheels were assembled with a slice of pool noodle between two CDs.  The axle was inserted in the vehicle, with a wheel placed on the dowel on each side, and a bottle cap hubcap was glued on each end of the dowel, not attached to the wheel.  This meant the wheels could each turn independently.   You can see the wheel construction on these photos below of my prototype.  I still need to add my headlights!

We used various 'gems' as lights and other embellishments on the vehicles.  Here's the box of gems after the lid popped off while I was putting it away.  Oops....

Here's an adorable finished train car made by my youngest student, a 3rd grade boy.

And a funky race car made by a 4th grade girl.

The wackiest shaped vehicle was this, which was some sort of camper trailer contraption, made by a delightful 5th grade girl.  She missed one class out of our 7 classes, and tends to work slowly, so I'm glad she was able to get this project complete. With more time, she could have spent more time on her windows and people.

I wish we'd had more time for more details, but we did the best we could with the time we had. We had one emergency class cancellation, not a snow day, but a squirrel day!  Yes, we  had a squirrel invader making himself at home in our classroom, and making quite a mess.  Once he was trapped (and released far away, I hope) we were able to get back to class.  I'm pretty terrified of rodents so this was a traumatic incident!

I only had three students this fall; they are three of the nicest kids ever.  There was zero arguing or fighting, and they were so kind to each other.  They go to different schools and hadn't met before, but instantly formed friendships and by the end of the session, they often left class arm-in-arm and with hugs, and had exchanged digits and were planning play dates!  So the projects were successful, but there was this additional success as well!

By the way - this was, as I said, a very small class.  If you attempt this project with a larger class, there's one important adaptation I'd make.  I'd use a base box of the same size for each student, that then could be added to.  If the bottom footprint of each vehicle, whether a train, a taxi, a school bus, a fire engine, a taxi cab, a truck, or an airplane, was the same size, all the axles could be cut to the same size and save a LOT of trouble!! Otherwise, this project can be done pretty easily.  Have fun!