As featured in
The New Zealand Listener & Sussex Life magazines
C r e a t e d b y
Activities III
Activity 1: paper casting
Materials:
â–º paper: any kind will do e.g. junk mail, newspaper, toilet paper, egg boxes.
â–º clean tap water.
â–º a clean, empty, 4 litre (4 quart) ice cream pail.
â–º a blender: second hand is best, but clean it very, very carefully if you plan to re-use it for food.
â–º a sponge: the inexpensive kind work well.
â–º a strainer: old is fine, as long as it's not rusty.
â–º some paper towels.
â–º a mold: many companies sell beautiful molds for paper casting. You can also use candy or cookie molds, or even rubber stamps.
Method:
1. Tear paper into 1" pieces.
2. Pour a cup of water in a blender and add 8 - 10 pieces of paper.
3. Blend at high speed for 20 seconds, or until paper is completely pulped.
4. Holding the strainer over the ice cream pail, pour the paper pulp into the strainer then pour the drained pulp into the mold, patting it in place with your hand.
5. Pat the paper with a sponge to remove excess water.
6. Squeeze out the sponge and continue gently pressing out the excess water.
7. Gently pat the paper casting with paper towel and carefully lift the casting out of the mold.
8. Set the casting aside to dry.
*You can also paper cast from 3D objects.
Activity 2: crystals and fractals
Create a piece of art inspired by crystals or snowflakes.
*You could look into how they form and/or the healing properties of each type.
Activity 3: group cardboard project
This speaks for itself! What a great idea.
Artist(s) unknown.
Activity 4: Paper-Cut Art
Kevin Stanton is a Paper-Cut Artist. This piece is made of coloured paper strips, based on a painting by French artist, Fragonard.
Try one yourself - it doesn't have to be fancy and it could be a symbolic portrait, representing your feelings.
1. Using a box cutter, cutting mat and metal ruler, cut shapes out of some left over mounting board. I found it easier to cut the triangular shapes from cut out strips.
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2. Cut out smallish pieces of tissue paper, apply glue and wrap around your shapes. It's easier to fold the tissue round if you cut bits off the edges with scissors.
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3. Mount a sheet of A4 paper onto and A3 grey board and stick your shapes on.
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4. Mount a sheet of A4 paper onto and A3 grey board and stick your shapes on.
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Activity 5: using simple shapes
Activity 6: papier mache
Materials:
â–º A bowl or large container
â–º Flour, wallpaper powder/paste, or white glue
â–º Water
â–º Your base structure
â–º Paintbrush
â–º Newspaper
Use a ceramic bowl or balloon as a mould to create your own bowl or flower.
Art by Lynn Harriet.
Art by Patricia Anders.
*You could create your own moulds cut out from foam and backed onto another piece.
Activity 7: bleeding tissue paper art
1. Cut out pieces/shapes of bleeding tissue (not the regular wrapping tissue)
2. Position on canvas, as shown below.
3. Apply water with a paintbrush or trigger spray bottle and let it soak through onto the canvas.
4. Peel off tissue paper to reveal your art piece.
Image by Lisa Storm.
Activity 8: hollow earth theory
Some people believe that the Earth is hollow.
If this is true what would you like to see on the inside?
The sky's the limit....!
Activity 9: magazine strips
This magazine piece looks as if it has been constructed and arranged using a compass scalpel and pasted onto a piece of board. The board is then turned over and cut along the edges.
Activity 10: stippling
I came accoss this photograph (below) and thought that it might inspire you to do a stipple brush art piece with acrylic paint on canvas or wood.
You can buy round stipple brushes made from hogs hair. To get a similar effect build up your dots in layers.
Here is another example of stippling with a pencil eraser:
Mix this up with taking some photographs of the city at night by setting your SLR on a manual setting and taking pictures of the lights out of focus.
Activity 11: weaving with type
This is a simple but interesting idea of cutting out strips of text and weaving them, as shown below:
This could form a background for a mixed media piece or you could overlay it with a piece of your own creative writing.