Low Relief Cardboard Bird Creations

 

This is a very cool cardboard bird project inspired by the cardboard 'pigeon series' by American contemporary artist Cheryl Cochran @cardboardsea. You can see her work on her Instagram. She uses found cardboard pieces and paint to create cardboard forms, often pigeons, with startling personality and humor. Her style plays with texture and loose brushstrokes.

This lesson was taught by one of my recent student teachers. It turned out very successfully!

Students first looked at her work on her Instagram and discussed low relief.

Then, they used laptops to look up bird images. They sketched these out onto scrap carboard, making all the body parts separate shapes.

Then they cut everything out and roughly assembled it to make sure it looked good and complete. 

All the pieces were painted using tempera paint.

Let dry until the next class.

Then assemble all the pieces using white glue. Students can then use coloured pencils, crayons, oil pastels, etc, to make random texture marks or details on top. 

I love how fun and quirky many of these turned out!