Summer Art Camp, Week 4 of 5

This week's sessions were titled "Pop-Ups" in the morning, and "Delicious" in the afternoon. Though my more general classes like Painting, Drawing, or Sculpture tend to be full, my specially focused classes are always a bit smaller. I know this from experience, and though some may say, why run special classes for less income, my answer is that I get to dig deeper into a specific theme and try some new ideas to explore with an group of kids that really want to explore that theme as well. I like to have fun too, it's not always "about the money." (I also offer free scholarships to area kids whose families are in financial crisis.)

For "Pop-Ups" my focus was on paper engineering. (The "E" in STEAM/STEM education). We started with pop-up cards to loosen up, and ended those with a flower-based pop-up that we re-interpreted as a splash, flame ball, explosion, or flower based on THIS youtube tutorial.

We then did a pop-up house based on THIS video. We folded a sketch page into 4 parts then drew ideas for the 4 rooms they wanted in our own house. Pool, ball room, gym, art studio, bedroom, kitchen... (no one did a bathroom) ;-)

I had some patterned paper I got from Nasco I made available to them for carpets and wall art. Construction paper scraps were also helpful.

Our final big pop-up project is one I had seen before and never tried. Essentially an image created with many layers fitted within accordian folded paper. We created a sketch knowing that we needed 4 layers, background, foreground, and two central middle ground areas to give us depth. These were then layered into accordian folded paper as shown.

I pre-beveled paper to make folding easier by laying 4 pages on the edge of a paper cutter board, using the grid, pressing along the cutting edge with the blade up and away. This gave a light crease that was easy for students to re-crease quickly. We could have measured, or used the width of a ruler to draw lines, but with time as a factor, I did this and it worked really well.

If I did this again, I'd find a clearer plastic, ours was slightly foggy, but it could have been smudges from hands... We also did our images on the plastic with sharpie and painted to backs with white opaque paint to make it stand out. It may have been easier to cut out elements and put them on the plastic with double sided tape (which I didn't have) but these came out well. There may be many ways to do this project, feel free to share your tips in the comments.

The second class, "Delicious," was a bit more challenging. Taking a theme of food is a good one for kids, (Since their lives revolve around that and electronics.) We started the week by making a plaster plates and a favorite meals on top. I like to use aluminum foil as an armature, then wrap that in plaster, as well as a plastic plate.

​My unique take on this is that we don't paint the plaster, we cover it with colored tissue paper. I used acrylic medium for glue, but you can just use watered down white glue, Mod Podge, or any water-based glue. Coat the area with glue, add small ripped pieces of tissue, and more glue on top. Overlap paper to cover the whole object. At the end you can add some details with paint markers or acrylics. Tissue can be cut to add patterns on top as well. The best reason for using tissue is that it does not flake off the surface like paints do, and it seals the surface with a bold color that looked great on these sculptures. It is also a technique from Japan, used for centuries, though usually over clay. 

While we waited for plaster to harden, we had an overlapping project of making "stuffed food pets." They thought about and sketched on if they were a food, what would they be? Lots of humorous conversations and images. We came up with 3 ideas each and then decided which would be easiest or doable as a fabric "stuffed creature." We created paper patterns from copy paper to keep the sizes manageable and the felt we were using comes in that size too. (Also from Nasco in bulk) 

We used accenting colors of yarn to sew, awls to help make pilot holes, foam core scraps to protect tables, and fat needles that are easy to thread. Everyone struggled in the beginning, but quickly learned and helped each other. All, ages 7 through 16 did well. We added some elements with hot glue along with googly eyes I had leftover from last year. Be sure to not use hot glue directly on the eyes because it's too hot. I squirt a bit on paper, mix it with a popsicle stick and then apply it while still sticky. That seemed to work well.

Wednesday, we tool a field trip to a local cup cake shop to draw. These were later re-outlined with Sharpie Markers and either painted with watercolors, or tissue paper applied with a glue. (The technique is described above with the plaster food, so it works on paper and canvas as well.)

Our week "Delicious" ended with Sharpie monoprints. We folded our sketch papers and drew within the shapes it created, filling them up with foods we liked. Then covered that with plexiglass, and used sharpies to color in our designs and trace contours last to avoid smearing.

Using rubbing alcohol on paper we ran it through a press to transfer the images. We found that you must wait for all the alcohol to be absorbed by the paper before pressing; puddles left unpleasant runs. We did a second "ghost" print for fun too by spritzing the actual acrylic plate.

This could be done with transparencies if plexiglass is not available. 
I am sure this would work well with water-based markers. We may try those next week.

We did this project earlier in the summer without the use of a press, and though it worked, these images were much more saturated and crisp.

For more of my STEM/STEAM resources, check HERE. Use discount code 3YPBN853 for 30% off most resources.  The same resources are available through Amazon without a discount.