Our school held a comic contest for Ocean Week. Students had to come up with an aquatic super hero, write and fully illustrate a comic panel. What a success! Here are our first two winners, “Kara the Kelp Queen” by Mariel A. and “Sealed with a Kiss” by Riley S.
"Kara the Kelp Queen" by Mariel, Fifth Grade
"Sealed with a Kiss" by Riley, Fourth Grade
We were fortunate to have artist Marietta Ellis, a former automobile designer for General Motors, visit our school. She educated the children on the history of comics and held comic draw-along assemblies. Ms. Ellis helped judge the contest. Mariel was the grand prize winner and her comic was featured in our local paper.
Tune in next time for more amazing comic contest winners!
This week fourth grade finished their foil sea creatures. If you have never tried tooling foil repouseé, you simply must! It is so much fun. If you are unfamiliar with repouseé, check out this excellent post at A Faithful Attempt blog.
We talked about the repouseé process. We are going to use a pencil to shape and press lines and patterns into our foil. We will make texture. For practice, I gave kids a piece of heavy aluminum foil and we folded it four times. The number one rule: always keep the foil on the newspaper pad. The pencil will bend the metal down into the pad.
We practiced drawing different lines (wavy, straight, zig zag) and patterns on our test foil. I showed kids how to flip the foil to the back and press lines into the back of the foil. Once kids got used to working the foil front and back, they really enjoyed the process.
Day 2
I passed out square paper sketch sheets and templates (optional – I encouraged kids to make their own design so long as it filled the square). Goal: create a sea creature with a textured body and textured background. When the sketch was approved, I gave them a square of foil. They taped the sketch to the foil and retraced their lines. then they turned over the foil and pressed more lines into the back.
Optional templates ruled to fit foil squares.
Pencil sketch and completed art
Day 3:
Color with colored Sharpies. The color makes our repouseé art looks like jewels of the sea!
Here they are on display in the school lobby for our annual Ocean Week
Options:
Skip the background. Cut out the textured sea creature. Color on both sides and hang as a mobile.
Skip the pre-cut squares and do the project on folded heavy foil.
Bottle caps are abundant, colorful and free – a perfect art supply! Second graders worked in small groups to create bottle cap mosaics. We used an under sea theme to tie into our whole-school ocean education program. The art will be displayed in the school lobby.
Prep:
Paint foam core or cardboard if desired (I painted all the boards the same color – no matter how they are arranged, they will make a unified design). Sort bottle caps by color. Lay out overall design on prepared board (I used a paper template or chalk for this step).
Assembly:
We used Aleene’s Tacky Glue to attach the caps to the painted cardboard. I squeezed out the glue onto paper plates and the kids applied it using popsicle sticks. Kids worked in groups of 6-7 to complete their murals.
Second graders glue bottle caps to mural.
Each class had a unique design.
Each mural panel was made by a table of 6 second graders.
I planned the color scheme based on the most popular bottle caps colors. We had lots of water, soda and Gatorade caps in white, green, red, dark blue and orange. The least common colors were yellow and purple – we had to use these rare colors as accents only (my dream of a giant purple octopus mural was out).
Are you looking for a permanent bottle cap mural? I bought the book, Bottle Cap, Little Bottle Cap by artist Michelle Stitzlein. The book has detailed directions for creating murals using boards, electric drills and special screws. Parents at our school are preparing outdoor art using this method right now, and I will post their photos next week.
