Tim Burton Inspired Clay Portraits

This is a really fantastic lesson I found on a public Facebook art group 

"ART TEACHING EXCHANGE".

 It was posted (public group) by Amber Pitre who has a private home art studio. 

We started off with a slideshow of Tim Burton's work and films. My students don't know any of his older films (Beetlejuice, etc- *crying emoji*). We discussed the similarities of his characters and the dark and Gothic style nature of it all. 

So, following her instructions, I picked up these 4x6" wood frames from Michaels. They didn't have the exact number I needed, so I had to go searching at other stores to find small wooden frames. 

Student started by removing he cardboard from their frame and painting their frame with black acrylic paint. They wrote their names on the back. They chose a piece of scrapbook paper (picked up from Dollarama) and traced their carboard backing onto it and glued that down. This serves as the 'wallpaper'. 

I gave each student a sheet of parchment paper to work on. They traced the inside of their frame on it so they knew how big to make their clay portrait.

Many student even drew out a little plan on the parchment even though I didn't ask this of them.

Each student received one small pack of Model Magic (I ordered the class pack of white).

Because these are quite small, this only took one period (about 50 minutes). Student found out pretty quickly that it's tricky to get really small, fine details with model magic (it's so foamy) but they did pretty good! These need to dry overnight at least.

The next class they were painted using acrylics.

While they waited for these to dry, they used white paint pens to draw swirly 

and whimsical patterns on their frames. 

Then they hot glued their portrait onto their frame. I think my kids really enjoyed this project!