Balloons and Paste

PINATAS!
Week six at our class proved to be an interesting experiment in how long a two year-old can spend dipping their hands in paste. The instructor decided that this would be a good time to try papier mache. So balloons in hand we began.

Of course, since the children are young, they were more interested in playing with the balloons than using them as armatures for pasting. To help with this we were each given two, one for play and another which we taped onto a plastic container to prevent it from rolling around the table while we worked with it.

For paste we used a flour paste which is simple to make and not too pricey. I prefer Pritt Paste. It is available at most craft stores for about $1.49 per box. One box makes a gallon of paste and it stores quite well if covered tightly. It does get a little more watery this way. Left uncovered it will form a crust which can be peeled off but it will last only about a week this way before it starts to dry up. The difference is that it sticks together better than the flour paste and dries faster.

Secondly, we used strips of newspaper. The strips should be torn not cut as the rough tear edge helps the pieces to blend together. When tearing newspaper, you should tear with the grain. It is pretty easy to find out f you are tearing the right way. If you tear with the grain you will get nice long straight tears; against the grain the paper tears off in small uneven tears. You should tear a good pile before you start. You will be surprised how much paper it takes! Once you have torn the long strips you should tear them into pieces about 2 inches long for easy handling.

The rest is pretty simple. You dip the newspaper strips in the paste wipe off the excess and then press it onto the surface of the object that you are using as your armature. completely cover the surface with newspaper. The more layers of paper the harder the structure when done. If you are working with more that one child, you will need to take a plain piece of paper for writing the child's name and that should be applied last. I liked to use either unprinted newspaper or paper towels for the last layer. This gives you a plain surface for finishing and also helps you see that you have put at least two complete layers on the surface. Take some paste and rub the entire surface with it to smooth out the surface. Let it dry.

When the object has dried, you can decide how you are going to finish it. I will show you what we did with the balloons after the next class.

RECIPE FOR FLOUR PASTE
1 cup of flour
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon of salt to prevent mold formation
Basically you need an equal amount of water and flour and a small amount of salt. Mix until there are no lumps.

class 4...Vegetable Printing

Wow! What a crazy week this has been! Too much to do and too little time for me!
This week in the pre-school art class we worked with two different media but I am only going to talk about one for now, VEGETABLE PRINTING.

With the high cost of fresh vegetables this is not necessarily the cheapest of art projects but it does offer some interesting results. I am going to talk to you about how to do this and some other possibilities for printing tools. You'd be surprised by the variety of printing tools you have right in your own kitchen.

We worked with celery, heads of cabbage, potatoes, carrots, green peppers and onions. This sounds like the ingredients for a nice vegetable soup. Unfortunately, the vegetables were not edible when we were done. The instructor provided squares of paper, knives for the adults to use and washable tempera paint. The paper was unsatisfactory for printing as it had a texture which inhibited the image from printing cleanly. Most people would turn to washable paint when working with young children. This isn't necessarily a great idea for print making with vegetables. You see the vegetables have water in them so they water down the paints which already have limited pigment (the stuff that makes the color) in them . This combined with the textured paper really effected the results. The paint was applied by pressing the vegetable into a meat tray that had paint in them. Meat trays make great paint holders for this project.
The images are made by having the child stamp the image onto the paper in an up and down motion.

When I have done this with young children, I used regular tempera. You might ruin an old shirt but the colors are brighter and the images are much clearer. Sometimes pressing the image into the paint results in an uneven coverage of paint on the vegetable. Using a small paintbrush or a sponge brush to paint the vegetable surface gets an more even coating resulting in a much clearer image. A smooth white paper or brown packaging paper like that used for mailing packages is a great surface for printing. Remember that their hands are small so limit the size of the pieces of vegetable that you are using.

I've included some images that you might expect to get using vegetables. Since this blog is getting too long. I'll write about printing with found objects in the kitchen tomorrow.
In the first picture, the image on the left is made from a potato that has been cut in half. The middle image is made from an onion and the images on the right have been made with a hunk of red cabbage. The images in the second picture are made from a slice of green pepper and an apple that has been cut open. When sliced horizontally rather than vertically, you will find a nice
star-shaped image. The potato can also be cut into a variety of shapes. Here I have cut a heart shape out of it. It's a great way to print cards or wrapping paper for special occasions.

But I don't want to....

It's 5:30 in the morning and here I am typing on the computer because I have so much I want to tell you. When my daughter-in-law Julie asked me to take this art class with my granddaughter Leah, I was thrilled! What a wonderful gift she has given me! What could be better than to spend an hour sharing something that I love with a child I love?

While I knew that it would be difficult for me to attend an art workshop with children as a participant rather than the instructor, I promised myself that I would use this time to focus on Leah. I think I did rather well. I held back with my suggestions but I could not help myself from observing what was happening with the other children.

First, let me say that I am wondering what the goal of this workshop is. Is the instructor simply hoping to expose the children to the art making process once a week for an hour or, by including the parents, is she hoping to show them ways that they can continue to explore the arts beyond this little room? I'm hoping that it is the latter.

It was interesting for me to see the parents as they brought their children into the classroom. They were all wearing nice slacks and beautiful sweaters. I, on the other hand, had on a pair of paint stained jeans and an old sweatshirt. Did they not know that toddlers could be messy in their creativity? I also had an apron for me and one for Leah. This prompted one mother to say that I must be an artist as I came prepared. What gave it away? My paint stained jeans or the aprons?

As Leah and I immersed our hands into the finger paints and smeared them over the surface of the paper (which I think was too large for the size of the children, 22" by 26") I watched the other children and parents. One mother kept saying that her child was more interested in music than visual art. I thought great! Play some music, classical, jazz, reggae, while the child finger paints. Encourage him to show on paper the way the music sounds. This is a great way for children to connect visual images to sound patterns and leads to fluency in reading. Being able to see the patterns of words as well as hear them aids children with their oral reading and writing. Great poetry always sounds better when read by the poet that wrote it! The writer hear the cadence of the words as he looks at them, so he knows when to emphasize and when to hold back. Ah, but I digress.

I was most fascinated by the child who refused to touch the finger paint. The mother seemed embarrassed that he wouldn't put his hands in the paint. He kept saying, "but I don't want to."
The mother said to me as I was helping Leah wash her hands that her son was not comfortable with the finger paints and almost apologized for his behavior. I told her not to worry. He was only two and many young children are sensitive to textures (Why do you think they gag when given lumpy food?) and that this to would pass. What I didn't do was offer suggestions for ways that he could engage in a the finger painting process without having to use his hands. I didn't want to appear to be taking over the class but next week I am going to give her a few ideas.

Here are my suggestions for finger painting with young children. First of all, go to your local dollar store and find a large, plastic serving tray. The one in the picture was purchased at The Christmas Tree Shop for $1. Use the tray to place the paper in while applying the paint. This provides for less mess and easy clean-up. It also helps to keep the size of the paper in line with the size of the child. Trying to put finger paint over a large surface created some frustration among the children as the paint had dried in many places before the child had the opportunity to work into the surface.
If your child doesn't want to touch the paint, there are other ways to apply the paint onto the paper. Using a sponge brush (29 cents at A.C. Moore) or a sponge roller (also available at A.C. Moore, Micheal's Craft store or Joanne Fabrics or any craft store in your area) is the cheapest way but the foam absorbs some of the paint. I prefer using the rubber roller, (This is also available at most craft stores or on line at Dick Blick or Sunshine Crafts) a little more expensive but the roller moves the paint over the surface without soaking up the paint. I discovered this when I was teaching a child who was severely tactile defensive.
To create marks in the paint give your child a popsicle stick or tongue depressor. She can use this to make lines in the paint. Pieces of cardboard boxes can also be cut to create multiple lines. (check out the one in the picture.) Experiment with other objects in your home like plastic forks, hairbrushes, potato mashers. The possibilities are endless. If your child doesn't mind putting her hands in the paint, her hand is still the best tool. Encourage her to move her fingers in differnt ways. Use the side of your hand to make fatter lines or a fist to move larger areas of paint.
Probably the most important part of this whole process is for you to enjoy the experience, too. Modeling how to use the materials without dictating what the image should be is key. And talk with your child about what is happening! Don't try to guess what the child's marks mean, ask questions about the lines he is making, encourage him to describe what he sees and how he feels, and, if the mess gets to be too much, remember the day when you wish your child was there to make a mess comes too soon.