2012: Project 6--Frank Stella-Inspired Cardboard Sculpture

This was one of the last projects we tried this past summer. I came across the artist Frank Stella on Pinterest. I had not heard of him before, but I was immediately drawn to his geometric artwork and his bright sculptures. I thought it would be fun to show the girls his artwork and create cardboard sculptures. I was first inspired to try this project after seeing this project posted on The Chocolate Muffin Tree blog

Here are some examples of Stella's work that I showed the girls before we started our project:

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I thought it was fun to show them images with people in them so the girls could get a sense for the large scale of his artwork.

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 And some of his sculptures:

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After I showed the girls Frank Stella's artwork, I showed them Chocolate Muffin Tree's cardboard project. Then I gave them a piece of cardboard and our bin of recycled materials and told them to get to it. We received how to use a hot glue gun safely and they were off! I think they really enjoyed the process of creating these sculptures. I love all the concentration you see in the photos as they are creating!

I thought it was simply amazing how they manipulated the cardboard and worked the glue fun! I didn't help them with these AT ALL!

Top image is my 9 year old's, bottom image is my (then) 6 year old's.

After they were done creating their sculptures, I spray painted them white.

And then they were going to paint them with acrylic paints. Ella picked cool colors.

Lily picked warm colors.

I admit that this project might have been a bit too ambitious for the end of the summer. Even though there was more than a week between when they created the sculptures and when they were going to paint them, the girls just were not that interested in painting the sculptures. They did a few tubes the first day. Then I tried to get them to keep going, but they just didn't feel like it. So unfortunately, we don't have a finished project. I still have them up in the closet. Maybe they will finish them someday. Maybe next summer. ;-) They absolutely LOVED the construction part of this though. I will have to remember that and see what I can come up with in the future that can feed off that.

Great Art Book Series & A Collage Project

Irene Luxbacher has created an absolutely wonderful series of books for kids and parents called the Starting Art Series. I came across these books this week while at the library with my toddler. They are PERFECT for introducing art concepts to children, especially if you do not have any kind of art background at all. Very elementary, yet fun! I picked up four of the six books in the series while I was at the library and I LOVE every one of them!

I took some photos of the inside so you can get a feel for what they are like:

 

The first page of each book, shows the projects you can find in it. And gives a one or two sentence blurb defining that particular medium of art.

Each project page shows step by step how to create the project and a larger view of the finished product.

The last page of the book has tips for parents and teachers for further projects and how to make art time fun. There is also a list of the art words used for that medium as a sort of index.

I REALLY liked the painting book. If you need any help at all teaching color theory! This is a great companion. There is a project for warm/cool colors, one for complementary colors, for tones (light and dark within one color), different brush techniques. FABULOUS!

 The same day I brought these books home, my older daughter had some friends over and my younger daughter asked if she could do an art project to give her something to do while they played. I told her, "Of course!" So I showed her the fish project in the collage book because I knew I could easily come up with the supplies for it.

 The instructions told her to make a banana shape for the fish's body. HA! She asked me if she could trace around a banana. :-)

You could make this project as easy as you like or add in more skills if you want it to take longer or have your child practice cutting. For the easy method, use circle scrapbook punches to create your circle shapes. For the more challenging method, have your child use a circle stencil to draw various sized circles or they can draw them freehand. Then have them cut all the circles out. We used a combination of these. I had a larger circle punch and we used a stencil for the smaller circles and Lily cut them out.

 After she figured out where she wanted all her circles to go, she used a glue stick to glue them down.

 Then added torn scrapbook paper for the water and an orange circle for the sun.

Last, she added a few sparkles to make her fish extra fabulous! A fun and super easy project (especially for non-crafty type parents!).

 Here are the other titles in the series:

2011: Art Project 6--Chihuly Inspired Sculpture

I first heard about Pinterest a couple months ago. Heard it was awesome, but didn't feel like I needed one more thing to be obsessed about on the computer. Then I came across an art blog where the blogger was talking about Pinterest. I decided to check it out and had a friend of mine "invite" me to join. Oh my gosh! This website is awesome!! It's a super easy way to bookmark ANYTHING on the internet into categories so you can remember it and come back to it. I've been addicted to it all week; found new recipes to try, new activities to do with the kids, AND new art projects! I came across THIS Dale Chihuly-inspired art project.

I had a completely different project planned for the girls' art journal this week. But once I saw this and how easy it is to make it (shrinky dink paper, permanent markers, and a glue gun!) I scrapped the original project idea and we have spent the last three days working on this:
The girls and I actually started this before I showed them images of Chihuly's work. When I finally got around to showing them images they LOVED his stuff! I got all of these images as screen grabs from Google Images. But you can find good information about Dale Chihuly on his website.
The girls immediately picked this one (above) to see larger. Then I told them it was on the ceiling in a hotel in Las Vegas and they thought that was sooo cool!The one above was Ella's favorite. I could have have called that, it has her favorite colors of lime green and blue. And Lily really liked the spiky ball below. I could look at Chihuly's work all day long. It's so interesting and beautiful.So we set out to make a sculpture inspired by his work. We each made a larger shape that I planned to use as the base. And then we used the scraps and colored strips to make curlicues.


I usually just let the girls do their own thing with my guidance for our projects. But I was sooo excited about this project I had to join in so my piece is below. :-)



We cut around some of the shapes hoping they would have a more organic shape after we baked them.

We figured out that it worked well to make thin stripes (coloring both sides of opaque white shrinky dink paper) and cut them up. Once baked, they made fun curly pieces.

Above: Some random shapes and colors Lily decided to try. :-)
To bake them, I used parchment paper on cookie sheets. I figured out quickly it was best to bake only one piece at a time so I could watch it and quickly remove it, mold it if I felt like it and put it aside to cool. The girls obviously didn't really participate in this part. But they loved watching through the oven window to see when the pieces started to curl.

Last step--Gluing the sculpture together:

Step one: a solid base using the larger pieces.
Step 2: Adding the medium/thicker curlicues.
Step 3: All the little curlicues left!
I let the girls pick out which pieces I should glue next and
give me their opinion on where they thought the pieces should go.
The FINISHED product!

Honestly, this project took forever! Hours! BUT, I LOVED it! The girls liked it a lot and we're all very proud of our masterpiece. They even had to bring it over to Gramma and Grandpa's house tonight to show them they were so proud.