Aboriginal Inspired Lizards

 

The idea for this project came from a picture found on Pinterest which lead me HERE to the Swedish Blog 'Creativ Company'. These reminded me of aboriginal punu (wood carvings) of lizards I had seen, so I decided this would be a good introduction for my grade threes to aboriginal art as well as mixed media sculpture. 

 

image via Artlandish.

image via waltja tjutangku palyapayi

 We began with a thick stick for each student and a couple of long pieces of soft wire. I decided rather than drilling any holes that I would have my students wrap the wire around the body. I instructed them to bend the end of each piece of wire to represent the toes and then each piece of wire was wrapped around the stick to form two sets of legs. Students then applied a base colour paint of their choice to the body and legs. 

After viewing Aboriginal paintings and carvings, students used a tiny brush and a matchstick to apply a pattern of stripes and dots in colours of their choice. Small googly eyes were glued on to complete and immediately these lizards had quirky personalities of their own! 

 

Contour Hands In Wire

  

I love to combine teaching contour drawing with working with wire - having to transform their drawings into wire sculptures really seems to reinforce the idea of using one continuous line that only follows the outlines of an object. 

 

Last year my grade 5 students rose to the difficult challenge of not only drawing their own hands using a marker (no erasing) but then transforming one of their drawings into wire. It was interesting to see the different approaches individual students used for this project. Some laid the wire directly over their drawings, some used their hand almost as an armature to get the shape, and some really did "freehand" it (so to speak).

I picked up some wooden coasters from a craft shop which served perfectly as a little stand for each sculpture - we just hot glued them right on.

As a group they represent a teacher's nightmare - every kid in the class wanting your attention all at the same time!

Scarab Beetle Sculptures

These scarab beetles were made by grade 6 students who were studying Ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptians worshipped scarab beetles as an embodiment of the god Khepri. Pendants made to resemble Scarab beetles were often worn by the pharoahs as a symbol of their wealth and power. 

Students created a small clay body for the beetle after viewing photographs of scarab beetles. Three ridges were made on the underside of the body. After firing and glazing, the legs, made from short pieces of wire covered in masking tape were glued into these ridges with a hot glue gun. Students also added small glass beads as the eyes. Similar beetles were created by a group of grade one students a few years ago. They can be seen here.