Garden Gnomes and Gnome Homes!

The last time I made garden gnomes with my students was with 3rd graders during my final year teaching, before I retired in June 2012.  Now, with my DragonWing Arts program, I have way less students, so their projects can be bigger and more elaborate.  So each student built a papier-mache garden gnome, and also created a unique "gnome home" in a tree stump or mushroom.

I can't separate the projects into two separate posts, since they go together so well, so I'll try to explain how we made both, all in this one post!

The gnome armatures are simple.  We started with Gatorade bottles. Some kids chose 20 oz. bottles, but most wanted the smaller 16 oz.  On the bottoms, I hot glued a cardboard circle for a flat surface, and then two easter egg halves for shoes.  Inside the bottles we put a scoop of playground sand, to weight them down and keep them from tipping over.  We closed the caps and added cones of heavy paper for hats, taped and hot glued.  Arms were made with newspaper-covered wire.  The whole assembly was covered with overlapping layers of papier-mache, and when dry, finished with a layer of gesso for a bright white painting surface. 

Meanwhile, we began also building the gnome homes, using cardboard from cut up shipping cartons, bent along to corrugations to make them curve, and then hot glued and taped.  Tops were either made from paper bowls or more cardboard, for mushrooms or tree stumps, depending on what the student wanted.  Branches were added with cereal box cardboard as desired, and they were glued to a cardboard base.  The students wanted windows and doors, so they drew them where desired and I cut them with a utility knife.  The entire assemblies were covered with plaster bandage to make them solid.  Some students used the plaster bandage to make tree roots, and/or to add texture to their trunks.  As you can see, the sizes of the houses varied widely.

Next, the kids mushed together some polyester fiberfill and acrylic paint, to make green "moss" to use on their gnome homes.  We started out wearing rubber gloves, but that didn't last too long....  It was too much fun to have green hands!

We used Nasco Bulk-Krylic paints on both the gnomes and the gnome homes, and  then, we embellished.  The gnomes were given hair and/or beards as desired, wiggle eyes, and more.  A couple of gnomes became archers, and one (pictured below left) even had a quiver of arrows on his back, that, and his long blonde pony tail, unfortunately are not visible in the photo.  The quiver was made from felt that was cut and glued.  A disco ball was made for one "disco gnome", and other embellishments included belts, aprons,and as you can see on the right below, a backpack filled with colorful feathers!

This gnome below has a desk with an iMac and an iPhone on it, on his rooftop patio.  Plus he has really cute ears, I think!

The gnome homes were loaded with leaves, flowers, pine cones, bark, and so much more.  An old stash of sample ceramic tiles were used to make sidewalks and patios.  Some laminate samples were made into door signs.  Colored sheet foam and wire were used to make things like the swing shown below.  (She also has a rooftop garden on her gnome home.)  We were going to make flowers, but running out of time, I got fake flowers at the dollar store and we hot glued them all over the place!  The gnome is wearing a really cute apron, but  unfortunately you can't see it all in this pic. 

I love this sign I discovered on the rooftop garden.  It says "Express Yourself With Art!"

 

The gnome home below has a large piece of birch bark for a roof, with some tile on it for relaxing, and a bark chimney, too. And lots of tree roots, and moss and vines, and such. 

The gnome home below is for an archer gnome, and has a secret doorway hidden by the flower on the top, and a staircase and ladder to access the secret door.  And on the yellow square, the gnome is selling magic potions, or something of the sort. 

What can I say?  I just plain love this mushroom-top gnome home below, laden with flowers, glittery pine cones and a bark glider-swing, and moss.  So pretty!  The gnome previously pictured, with the basket of feathers on her back lives here!

The girl who made this gnome home / disco dance club below is a quiet shy third grader with a wonderfully sly sense of humor.  The GDC on her gnome's chest stands for Gnome Disco Club, which is a tall mushroom.  Her gnome is actually able to fit inside the mushroom.

This below is the tallest gnome home, for one of the archer g nomes.  Sorry the picture is so poor.  Totally the fault of the photographer (me). 

With the room filled with open containers of wiggle eyes, fiberfill, fabric scraps, pipe cleaners, pompoms, fake flowers, feathers, craft foam, felt, toothpicks, wire, and more, everyone started to get a wee bit goofy.  Here's what happened:

 I hope you enjoyed our colorful gnomes and gnome homes!  I know we all enjoyed making them! Here's a link to another old post of charming student garden gnomes.

Plaster bandage direct cast mask!

My 9 year-old step-grandson has been bugging me to do an art project with him.  I suggested an old favorite project of mine, making a direct cast of the face.  So today he was dropped off at my house for two hours, giving us ample time to make the mask cast, to cast his fist in two parts and reassemble them, to eat a bowlful of melon, and even time for him to harass the cat!

We started by tying a covering over his hair.  A shower cap is a good alternative.  

Then we greased up his face with Vaseline, putting an extra-thick coating on his eyebrows.

We cut some plaster into various size squares and rectangles, and I got a bowl of very warm water and some paper towels. (The plaster sets more quickly quickly if the water is warm.)

I started dipping the pieces of plaster into the water, dripping off excess water onto the paper towels, and then smoothing them on his face, leaving his eyes exposed.  I made sure to fold the pieces that would be the outer edge of the mask, to make those edges neater and stronger.  

When I was done, he relaxed for a few minutes to let it firm up.  It didn't take long at all; as a matter of fact, the forehead was pretty solid by the time I was done with the chin!  When I thought the mask was dry enough to take off, I had him wiggle his chin a little, and then pulled I the mask right off his face.  It came off easily.  He went into the bathroom to scrub his face. 

I had suggested we cast a bunch of fingers to add to the mask like spikes, but he wasn't interested. Instead he said he wanted to make a cast of a fist.  I explained that I'd have to cut it in 1/2 to get it off, and so we decided to make it in two pieces.  First we cast the front, then the back, and then we used more strips to attach the two halves together.  The assembled fist is visible in the photo at the top of the post.    

He couldn't resist trying it on a few times while it continued to dry.  

The plan, I think, is to get together again next week to paint it.  I think he wants to add Wolverine claws to the hand, but I'm not sure about the mask.  I'd encourage him to add more details to alter it (horns, spikes, extra eyeballs, etc) but he's an impatient 9-year old and just wants to paint it.  He wanted to take it home to paint but his mom had to explain that she doesn't have the "right" kind of paint.

Tune in next week to hopefully see the finished products! 

A Good Day

Cool mask-in-progress, no?  But it wasn't made by one of my students.  On Friday, I spent the day at Elizabethtown-Lewis Central School, a little Adirondack school district, attending a Professional Development Day for North Country art teachers.  The art room in these pictures belongs to K-12 art teacher Terry Crowningshield, and the work in these photos is the work of her students.  Each time I'm in her classrooms, I feel like I'm home. Terry is a kindred spirit as an art teacher!

 The papier-mache masks in the pictures above are made on an armature of a plastic bag stuffed with newspaper.  Regular readers of this blog have likely seen plastic bag armatures for papier-mache before!  Here's the back of the mask shown at the top of this post, with the plastic bag still inside.  Below it is a picture of the insides of a mask once the bag has been removed.

 Here's the mask viewed from another angle, so that you can better see the facial features.

Another grade of Terry's students have been making goofy aliens from papier-mache, using the plastic air-filled "pillows" that you find in packages you've received in the mail.  Instead of popping them to remove the air, students taped them together to form their aliens and papier-mache'ed over them. Aren't they adorable?

 Here's some close-ups!

 This cutie-pie alien is even wearing earrings and carrying a purse!

On top of the cabinets, I noticed some plaster bandage people-in-motion sculptures, totally reminiscent of ones that my 6th graders made and that I've blogged about several times before  One of those posts can be found HERE.  Here's a couple of the sculptures that really interested me.

Part of our day was the opportunity to work hands-on using the media of our choice.  Terry, like me, likes to create large still life arrangements, with something different to offer from every side and angle.  I chose to do an 18"x 24" drawing with a large graphite stick, and then paint with some gouache paints that I own but haven't used in years.  The first photo below is of the still life view from where I was working.  The second photo is of my unfinished painting.  Looking at them both I notice a lot of mistakes in my artwork - though I guess my viewpoint while drawing was slightly lower than from where I took the photo.  Anyhow, it was great to have this opportunity!

 Hanging in the hallway were these adorable seahorses.  It's hard to tell from the photos, but they seahorses were glued on the paper with a little twist so that the bodies curved out three-dimensionally.  They were so adorable!

  There's so much more I could show you... but I'll close with this - a giant light bulb and a large candy package.  These again are projects I've done before!  Giant pop sculptures, including gridded enlarged candy bars!  Like I said before, I feel like I'm home in this art room! 

Thanks, Terry, for allowing all 29 of us into your classrooms for the day, and for taking the time to put together a great agenda, prepare the materials, and even make sure we were provided with morning muffins and beverages and a lunch so fabulous and large that I took half of it home and ate it for dinner tonight!