3D Art_Making Myths
WELCOME BACK! These past two weeks were super hands on and required a lot of energy from our students. The reason? Well because we worked with air-dry clay!
Many ancient cultures believed in mythological creatures that could protect and also destroy. Mythology is a traditional story, especially concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomena, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
Our students learned about ancient Egypt and became familiar with the role of art in their culture. We sculpted a figure that will represent their own personal protector or imaginary friend.
WEEK 5
The first class in our series of 3D art required our students to create their own armatures. The armatures were made out of a wooden base and newspaper wrap.
Each child had his or her own wooden armature and we had them roll up sheets of newspaper and wrap it around the wooden column. The children then used masking tape to secure it into place as well as so the clay has something to cling to.
WEEK 6
The second week of our project was the actual building of our sculptures. Our students worked with air-dry clay, keeping it moist with spritzes of water. Our instructor demonstrated how to create a base and then adding the facial features as a second layer. The students chose animals that were representative of ancient Egypt. They learned how to use different tools to manipulate the clay.
Our little artists used the water to smooth out the clay and spritzed it when it started to dry. They created round shapes by carving and smoothing out the back of the heads and hollowed the clay with pointy tools. After the facial features were perfected at the tips of our little fingers, the finishing touches were added! Wires for whiskers, indentations for the beak, scrapes the show the texture!
Now that our sculptures are drying, we will prepare to fix any cracks with hot glue, tissue paper and gel medium. The next step will be to paint our sculpture and make them look like gods and goddesses! This is a fairly long project, assuming that it will take at least another week or two. Sooooo stay tuned!