It’s nice to lead children through a step-by-step project in which they have plenty of room to insert their own creativity and experience that feeling of brand new territory where anything is possible.
Rachel: I know it sounds weird, but you’re going to take one of these… panty hose, and put it over your wire.
Hugo: Pantyhose!?
Max: I’m not a lady.
It wasn’t an easy feat stretching the nylon sock over the wire sculptures!
Isla’s original shape was big. She had decided it to be a spaceship, but when it came time for the sock, it looked like it was going to be near impossible to stretch it over her shape.
Isla: It’s too big. I can’t do it, see? I’ve got an idea, my spaceship… maybe I can make it like this. A little closer… My idea is… maybe we should make it closer together. I think I need to bend it more. Is this size bigger that a foot?
Abi: That’s the weirdest foot I’ve ever seen.
Ellie: We’re making a foot!?
Rachel: No, no. Whatever you want it to be.
Ellie: Oh I made a little trampoline! Wee!
Max used his strength to bend his wire into a compact shape, While Hugo built his to be much bigger.
The next step was applying a layer of glue to the whole thing.
Hugo: How long will this take to dry?
Rachel: Hmm… How long do you think?
Max: A couple hours.
Rachel: Well probably over night.
Max: You can email us and tell us if it dried.
Rachel: Or else you could just come next week, and see if it’s dry.
Max: Yah, well I’d like you to send us an email, so we can know ahead of time.
Rachel: Why? Don’t you think it will dry?
Max: I know, I’m just trying to,…Hugo put the glue on the wire parts.
Rachel: The whole thing. All the nylon gets covered.
Max: All the nylon? You got it.
Hugo: This is easy as cake.
When it came time to paint the sculptures, I had Hugo and Max focus on blending their paints, creating fluid borders between colours by just blending right on the sculpture itself. We talked about which colours look good together, and make nice shades when blended.
Hugo: Look at this. I took bluish white, and put it over the yellow.
Max: What happened? Oh yah, that looks cool.
Hugo: It’s super easy to make brown, you take green, blue, purple, orange and green. All the opposite colours- it’ll make brown.
I encouraged them to pick up a bit of white on their brushes to soften some areas, as well as other colours, leaving as much variation as possible. They were reminded of the colour wheel and what they had learned last year with me: Primary colours, mixing complimentary colours, mixing opposite colours, and creating tints and shades by adding white or black.
Hugo: Red and purple are really nice together. It’s actually blue and red that make purple. So blue and red go really well with purple. Could I have silver. I love silver. It’s actually my second favourite colour. Shimmer. Shimmer. Shimmer. Try adding silver and red. That is cool. Then I added some green. Check this out, this is silver here, then I add green, then a bit more silver. Blue and yellow are actually quite nice together. Blue yellow and green. You can make any colour with the primary colours I guess. You can make the colour wheel with it.
Abi: I’m gonna call it “the foot that stepped in mystery mud”. It’s the Mystery Mud Foot. It’s someone who stepped in some mud, and it kept turning their foot all different colours.
Anna: It’s hard to bend! I’m not strong enough to bend this! It looks like a bird, a pterodactyl.
Isabel: It’s a weird shape.
Anna: It can be a droopy bird.
Isabel: Sad bird. There. My shape is done. Smiley face.
Anna expanded on her sculpture to add feathers and jewels and dangly things.
Anna: It’s not a bird, but it has a lot of feathers. IT IS NOT A BIRD.
Anna was absolutely giddy with the feathering and jeweling of her abstract, not-a-bird sculpture. Her personality, sense of humor, and flamboyant style was emerging in this piece, that’s for sure!
Anna: I’m addicted to bedazzling. Yes. It’s perrrrfect. Oh. It’s so epic!