Summer Art Camp Week 2 of 5

This week our themes were "Art Buffet" in the morning where we do a little bit of everything (Painting Drawing & Sculpture) and the afternoon was "Sculpture." Camp runs Monday through Friday, each class is 3 hours with a 1 hour lunch break in between, and a mini-snack break at the halfway mark for each class.

​For our first session of Art Buffet, we asked the question, "If you were a bird, what would your house look like? How would it show off your personality?" After some brainstorming and sketching the results were delightful and varied. We had purchased some bird house kits from Oriental Trading, and used those as the base of our designs. 

We also explored opposites, creating a brainstorming list as a starting point. We talked about how a good illustration fills the space with foreground, middleground, background, and overlap. Students created illustrations in their choice of drawing media, and these were the basis for lenticular images. There are plenty of tutorials available on how to create these, we kept it simple for our camp program.

We also did observational drawings of shells, arranging them in a diagonal line, and coloring with oil pastel. We did the bubbles and waterline in white, then painted the sand in browns, oranges, and yellows, then the water in cool colors. Salt was added to the sand for texture as well as some splatter for the older students, and drawn marker dots for the younger crew. This lesson was based on one by Tabitha Seaton and her blog The Lost Sock. 

The Sculpture class worked on several projects, sometimes overlapping a bit. While one project was drying, we'd work on the other. We had a full day of plaster work outside.

First up was a project "If I could Fly." Student s made a list of their personal likes, interests, and strengths, then decided what kind of flying animal that might be. Some were rather traditional, like a bird or plane, others went the fantasy route with Pegasus, angels, dragons, or fairies, and one little artist decided she wanted to be a flying watermelon slice! 

We sketched and planned before making armatures from aluminum foil, masking tape, and foam-core. This was covered in plaster. The plaster was covered with colored tissue paper to seal the plaster. We did that with a half and half mix of acrylic medium and water painted on the plaster and again over the tissue. I have also done that with watered down glue, or even acrylic floor wax! It's a japanese technique usually used over clay forms, but works great over plaster.

When creatures were complete, they were embellished with painted patterns based on Oaxacan examples of alebrijes sculptures. 

Our second sculpture was based on my Bonsai Tree project. Because time was short we opted to create a base by folding 25 wires over a 4 inch dowel that was about 1/2 inch thick. This dowel and folded wire was taped tightly in masking tape, then covered with foil which was pressed around the tree to create a strong base. It was the base that was covered with plaster, and later painted with thinned acrylic paint. The lesson is detailed HERE. We used buttons for leaves because... to be honest, I had a ton of them sitting in my basement for years. They looked great!

Our last project was called "Grab Bag Sculptures." When you got a ton of left-over "stuff" in the room and you don't want to throw it away, bag it and have the kids "create" something from it. They were told it could be functional, decorative, non-objective or a particular thing. We had a catapult, confetti launcher, lily pond made from a balloon that exploded and more. It was a fun challenge and kept students busy for about 1 hour. I had some silly prizes based on students judging their own work.

I made pencils, markers, glue, scissors, and tape available for use, but they could only construct with items in their bag, including the bag. Each bag contained essentially the same stuff.