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 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 to create their model magic portraits.

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

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!

 

Puffy Paint Ghosts!

This is a student favourite lesson- homemade puffy paint! My Grade 11 students asked to do it again (I did it with them back in Grade 2!). So I had them teach it to a Grade 5 class during Halloween activities. They did a great job.

Mix half shaving cream with the same amount of white glue. Mix well. You can tint it different colours using liquid watercolours or food coloring. The kids love this!  It actually does dry puffy!

 

Spooky Halloween Windows with chalk marbling

This is a great one day lesson for Halloween!

I saw this project idea as a reel on the Instagram account of Ms. Potts’ Art Room.

The only difference is we did chalk marbling, and she used a paint marbling kit.

I didn't want to order a kit, so used chalk marbling and it worked well, but with 

probably more subtle colours. 

I pre printed out a window template as I didn't want to have students using the Sharpies to colour all of that- the smell gets strong fats and the sharpies just die that much faster. 

Grade 4-6 students drew spooky silhouettes within each window. It could be spooky or cute. 

I had to carefully review/explain the concept of silhouette with my kids: it is the dark shape or outline of a person, animal, or object seen against a lighter background.

Visual representation

A dark image against a bright background, such as a person in front of a sunset.

The interior of the shape is usually solid and featureless.

It differs from an outline, which is a linear drawing of the edge, whereas a silhouette is a solid shape

Once the images were drawn, they coloured them in using sharpies.

Then we filled an Ikea bin up with about 1 inch of water and scraped Prang chalk gently onto the surface. We used between 2-3 colours. Use more chalk for a more intense colour. Then swirl the chalk using a bamboo stick.

Ley the artwork down gently onto the water and press the back. 

Peel it up to reveal a cool marbling pattern!  The kids loved this step. Leave these to dry. 

We placed them on large sheets of paper to dry. 

Some of the finished artworks!