Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Oceans of Fun!

We have officially kicked off our Oceans of Fun underwater theme. We will be doing several nautical related art projects. Eventually all our hard work will culminate in an Art Show/Family Fun Night. To help get things started, Sponge-Bob Squarepants himself has joined us. He came to life through the efforts of Mr. Wales, Mr. Malloy, and with the help of several students, some of whom are shown above.
I like to adopt a different theme each year. My approach is to start with what children already know about and are obsessed with -- things from popular culture. From there, we move into research on that theme. We will look for the nautical theme in fine art, mythology, and science. Then we will express what we learn with art materials.
Now let's see how our yellow friend came to life:

He began life as a few sticks screwed into a board.

Mr. Malloy drew the face on a large piece of cardboard, and other pieces were added to make him three-dimensional.

Students here are helping add volume to the sculpture using Plastercraft.

He is beginning to take shape!

Now he has arms. We left one of the pores open to add Plastercraft from the inside of that area as well. We wouldn't want his arms to fall off!

This looks like a real artist here giving Sponge-Bob a coat of yellow.

"Absorbent and yellow and porous is he!"


Mr. Malloy socks it to him!

2 comments:

Marek Bennett said...

That thing looks great! It's amazing what you brought out of those simple materials. Papier mache RULES!

-- Marek

Paul Bozzo said...

Nice progression! The photos give us a small understanding of the amount of work that went into Mr. Squarepants.