This project has been a long time in the making! It came about somewhat organically, which is one thing I really love about it. After our last project, I brought in some "how to draw" animals sheets for early finishers to work on.
The children really loved doing these and after every class when it was time to put them away they would ask me if they could do some more the following week. I loved how engaged and enthusiastic they were, so I decided to come up with a project they could work this into.
I know that the children study animal habitats - and love it - so I thought it would be fun for them to chose an animal and a habitat to make their artwork around. The children had the opportunity to use our iPads to do a little research on animal habitats and find out what elements there are in the one they wanted to work with. The first step was to work out their ideas in their sketchbooks.
After that was done they began to create a tissue paper collage of their habitat using their sketchbooks for reference, cutting or tearing shapes and layering the paper to create the environment for their animal.
Next, students again got to use the iPads to find the perfect image of their animal. They used these images as references to draw from.
Once they drew their animal, they traced it onto a sheet of styrofoam and then glued that onto a cardboard backing for a homemade "stamp".
The final step was to use printmaking materials and tools to print multiple images of their animal onto their habitat artwork. This step was a little scary as the students had little experience with printmaking.
The results were surprising, exciting, and sometimes a little disappointing for the children, as the prints were often hard to "read" as the animal they made. However, some of the lessons we learned in the course of this project is how different materials work together, how sometimes we have to give over control of the materials and let them do what they want to do, and that art is not always what we plan - but there is still beauty in the finished product that we didn't plan for!
Here are some of these lovely artworks:
No comments:
Post a Comment