Week 1-Elementary Art-Wayne Thiebaud-inspired sculptures

Yay!  It's fall!  That means that school has started and I am back teaching art lessons to students.

I am teaching at Williamsburg Classical Academy which is a  homeschool co-op.  I have 2 classes-an elementary art class and a teen art class.

I wanted to get the elementary students excited about this year so I wanted to do a project where we could complete it in one class.  

Wayne Thiebaud is a contemporary artist who has made himself famous by painting everyday objects production style.

The kids were interested in knowing that Wayne Thiebaud is still alive.  I had them figure out how old he was since he was born in 1920(it's always good to throw some math in there!).

 The kids and I discussed things that we like to draw and create which lead itself into showing them that you can use just about any subject for your art piece.

The cupcake painting was a good transition to introducing our project.

I found this lesson plan on the Dick Blick educator site.The problem was that one of key supplies for the project is discontinued.  It was a spreadable thick acrylic-based paint.  I had to find a substitute so I searched Pinterest and found this recipe for a homemade modeling paste.  This was great because modeling paste is usually pretty expensive and I didn't want to be stingy when I was handing it out.

I picked some bright colors for the cupcake "frosting" and pre-made a bunch of it before class.  I did have to mix some blue later on when we ran out but it wasn't that big of a deal.   I was getting used to eye-balling the measurements.

The kids really enjoyed "frosting" their cupcakes.

Then then decorated them with bead "sprinkles" in various colors.  I had some little red pom-poms in case they wanted to put a cherry on top of them.  They all seemed to enjoy the project.  Here are their results:

I hope you enjoyed these.  Next week will be our Paperclay leaves which the teen class started last week.  Fun, beautiful project.

Thank you for reading!