Queen Nefertiti Plate painting

A completed work of art

What a coincidence that someone donated these plates to the school where the Art cabin is based, and we happen to be working on an Egyptian project. They depict the very beautiful Queen Nefertiti who was the Royal wife of the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten.

The children just used ordinary poster paints (we didn’t have any ceramic paints), fully aware not to wash them or eat off of them!

A completed work of art

Drawing on the features

A young artist applying an unique design

Adding detail

Painting the head of Queen Nefertiti

Egyptian Mummy making project

Yuk! Tea staining is smelly & messy

After a successful trip to the British Museum last Sunday with some of the Art Cabin members & their families, the children were very excited about making the Mummies.

Simple sculptures of the human figure were made from foil, these were then wrapped with cheap bandages which were cut into short(ish) lengths about 2.5cms wide. PVA glue was used to help the bandages stick to the foil.

To give the Mummies an ancient look, they were stained with tea (using tea-bags dipped in water).

Egyptian Sarcophagus on dispaly at The British Museum

Egyptian Sarcophagus with wrapped Mummy

Egyptian Sarcophagus

Egyptian Sarcophagus

Mummified Cat

Yuk! Tea staining is smelly & messy

Wrapped Mummy

Carefully wrapping the Mummy with bandages

Foil Mummy ready for wrapping

Shaping the foil

Sculpting the foil

Preparing the layers of foil

Egyptian Sarcophagus and Mummy art project

Egyptian Sarcophagus fit for a Queen

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post because this particular art project needed to progress in order for me to show you some finished Sarcophagi.

This is a great art project to run along side History lessons about the Egyptians. There was quite a lot of prep to do before the project started, this is mainly because I teach 5 – 11 year olds, and the younger children would have found it difficult to cut out all of their card pieces accurately.

I drew templates of the shapes I would need to build the sarcophagus (researching Egyptian Sarcophagi to get a good match, calculating the depth of the lid & base sides and making sure that the lid is slightly bigger than the base to ensure a good fit). I then made enough ‘sets’ for each child. I did leave some simple cutting out for the children to do (practice makes perfect).

The children had to assemble the Sarcophagus templates to make a lid and a base. They used sticky tape to adhere the card pieces together (small tabs had been incorporated into the design of the sarcophagus side templates, these were bent and stuck to the base/lid). The Sarcophagus lid & base were then covered in tissue paper (we used gold, silver and bronze). Apply PVA glue to the card, place a piece of tissue paper on it and then paint over it with another thin layer of glue. The insides of the lid & base were also covered.

The Egyptian King/Queen illustration for the lid of the Sarcophagus was drawn by tracing around the lid template. Facial detail, colour and glitter were added to finish, glue was applied to the back of the drawing and placed in position on the lid.

Next week we make the Mummies and the children are very excited about this.

Egyptian Sarcophagus fit for a Queen

Decorative Sarcophagi

Sarcophagus with seqin jewels

Adding detail to the design

Painting carefully

Drawing an Egyptian King

covering the card with tissue paper

Covering the base with tissue paper

Sticking the side tabs to the base

The assembled base

The Mummy Returns

model of a Mummy in it’s Sarcophagus

The new term starts next week, and we have a great model-building project lined up. Since we are now situated in the library, it’s hard not to be influenced by the books that surround us. One day last term I was sat near the Egyptians section of ‘People in History’ and started to leaf through a few books.

I thought it would be great if the children could make their own Mummy and Sarcophagus – I always remembered the Mummy coming out of the coffin in the Scooby-Doo cartoons when I was a child, how cool would it be to make your own.

So this summer I had a play with some cardboard & foil and made up a model to show the kids. Lyn has done lots of research too, so hopefully we will be able to show the art club some great pictures to get their imaginations fired up.

The model in the photo is not finished as it needs a colourful painting of an Egyptian mask on the lid and some gold paint to decorate the inside of the Sarcophagus.

I will post some more pics when the children start to make theirs.

Robot Pot Desk Tidy

Young artist with his finished Robot Pot

I saw this Art Attack project online and knew the Art Cabin kids would love to do it. Their imaginations went crazy whilst designing their robots. Thinking about what their robots could do, what special powers they had and what colours they could make them.

It’s a great way to recycle plastic bottles and they make great desk tidies or sweet holders.

Young artist with his finished Robot Pot

Young artist with his finished Robot Pot

Painting the robots

paper machéd robot pot

Paper machéing the robot

Robot Pot ready for paper machéing

Adding features to the plastic bottle

sticking on the cardboard features

A Robot design

Olympic art for the classroom

our very own Olympic torch

The school where the Art Cabin is based is having an Olympic themed week, all their lessons are being themed around the Games. In preparation for this, the children at school helped paint a banner for a classroom display and a rather fine Olympic torch was created too.

The banner is made from calico and poster paints were used to decorate it. The torch was made from a rolled up piece of card that had been taped to keep its shape. The top was evenly trimmed, then the whole cone was paper machéd. Finally it was painted with a couple of coats of gold paint and tissue paper was shaped, glued and positioned inside the cone to form the flame.

Olympic classroom display

painting the banner with poster paints

covering the card with paper maché

our very own Olympic torch

Exotic birds

A Bird Flying

In our small Hertfordshire village we have noticed some new residents. Green parrots have nested and are creating a bit of a stir. Despite their beautiful appearance, they don’t half make a noise!

The young artists thought it would be a nice idea to paint their own exotic birds.

Yellow Bird

Pink Bird

A Bird Flying

Bird flying towards a giant Beanstalk

A Flock of Birds

newspaper animal heads

This is a great little project, all you need is newspaper, black marker pen, scissors, paints (we used powder paints), stapler and a small piece of wire for the hanging loop.

Start off by drawing an outline of a large but simple animal head on two sheets of newspaper folded in half. Don’t make the ears too narrow as eventually you will stuff the head with crumpled newspaper or tissues.

I created some templates of animal heads to help my students. Once outlined, the head can be stapled close to the black edge. The stapler will only reach parts of the outline, but that’s ok because at this stage we just want the newspaper layers to stay together.

The animal head can now be painted. Start off with an all over colour, then, when that is dry add the detail.

When the head is completely dry it can be cut out. The edges can now be stapled BUT make sure you leave a gap for stuffing at the top of the head and at the bottom/side. We used crumpled industrial tissue to stuff the heads, but newspaper is fine. Don’t over pack the stuffing as the newspaper can easily rip. Finally staple the gaps and add a wire hanging loop.

I would like to thank a certain young student who inspired this project – you know who you are :·)

finished Bear complete with hanging loop

Mr Fox

Horse

painting the detail on Fox

painting the details on Bear

drawing and stapling the animal head outlines

mixing colours and painting the animal heads

It’s a bugs life – in pencil

Since we are now located in the library (until the Art Cabin repairs are sorted), we have made the most of the books that surround us. Recently the young artists looked at books about insects and using soft pencils such as a 2B and B set about drawing their favourite critter.

The children had to focus on shading, to make the drawing a little more interesting, they were asked to smudge the pencil lines and use a rubber to create erased lines over the image, after which, they added some more detail.

Teaching children to draw

line illustration using Sharpie pens

I’ve recently been reading a fantastic book by Mona Brookes called ‘Drawing with Children’. People assume that being able to draw well or realistically is a gift one is born with.

To be good at drawing has more to do with being able to see and recognise simple shapes in everything around us and then making marks on paper that are similar to those shapes and the area around those shapes (negative space).

Quite simply, drawing can be taught, just like any other subject. Mona devised an alphabet of drawing which lists the 5 Basic Elements of Shape. Once a person can relate these shapes to what they see, they are able to draw with a much better understanding of how an item is made up of lines, curves, angles, circles & dots etc.

With this in mind, I have decided to see if the alphabet of drawing can help my students. We studied the 5 Basic Elements of Shape, we looked at everyday items and recognised the shapes that made that object be. I illustrated a variety of gridded worksheets with some line drawings on them that the children could copy, just to see how they were ‘seeing’. This was just a warm up exercise to get them concentrating on shape. I thought they did quite well and what surprised me most was, they really enjoyed the challenge.

To make the drawing lessons fun, over the following weeks the children worked on line illustrations made up from simple shapes using their imagination. We had plenty of books for reference and inspiration as we are still based in the library. The students worked on ideas on draft paper before attempting their final piece of artwork.

An A4 piece of cartridge paper had been folded in half and a ‘window’ cut in one half. They had to draw two decorative borders, one around the ‘window’ and the other on the paper underneath (using the ‘window’ edges for guidance). Inside the border they had to draw an animal within a decorative background. Sharpie pens that had thick and thin nibs were used as our drawing medium.

Here are just a couple of finished pictures. The drawing alphabet did help the children with this project. It made them look for recognisable shapes which gave them the courage to put Sharpie pen to paper without having to do a pencil line drawing first.

Of course it’s a long term thing, being able to draw is not going to happen quickly but it’s encouraging to see the children grow with confindence.

Our next project will focus on pencil drawings.

Zebra

Cat chasing a Cockerel

Fish

Spring lamb

line illustration using Sharpie pens