Thursday, March 6, 2008

Mixed media collages are coming along.

We have really been moving in the lab, just hoping we can get all these projects finished in time for Cultural Arts Week. We are finishing clay, collage, painting, printmaking, radial designs, drawings, and just about everything else you can think of.

One project which really seems to be going nicely is our mixed media collages with a 4th grade class. I actually borrowed the idea from another art teacher and modifyed it, slightly, for this class. As the plexiglass picture frames began to break really badly, I saved the "box" or bottom cardboard part. After saving up about 40, I had a class use them to create these mixed media collages. First we glued colored poster board on top and began drawing a large, simple still life. We painted in the background areas, adding patterns and texture. We then began using Mod Podge to brush tissue paper onto the drawn table top. Student filled in objects on the table with foil, construction paper, packing peanuts, or whatever media they desired - giving us a lot of textures to play with. The final steps will include using oil pastels to outline, detail, and texturize and then gluing on actual silk flowers and leaves coming out of our vases. Because these are done on the cardboard box of the box frames, they are already prepared to hang on the wall! This is just one more way to recycle some of those old items hanging around the art lab.

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