Muses in clay

 

As well as experimenting in fabric, I have been making little plaques of my figures in modelling clay trying out different ideas.

 

Originally I intended to make them 3-D, but I enjoyed making them flat and so have not developed them beyond 2-D.

Much to the children's indignation, I have been using some of their playdough tools to get shapes.  They were placated when I gave up some of my precious clay and let them play with it too.

 

It is a new material for me and lovely and tactile.  Unfortunately, I made some too thin, so this one got decapitated.

I have painted some of them, using siennas and golds, but part of me prefers the plain white.  What do you think?

Chinese New Year at the Nursery

Since the start of the term, I have been helping our local school nursery (kindergarten) with art activities for the children.  The theme was CS Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader, inspired by the film that is out at the moment and using this to introduce the idea of Chinese New Year to the kids, who are all three and four.

 

We made Chinese Lanterns, with an inside of laminated shredded tissue paper for extra colour.  We made little dragons on sticks and a huge 4m long dragon using fabric we snow dyed outside.  The children also made the dragon's head using card, which the cut and stitched together.

We also made hundreds of felt balls and strung them on elastic to make bracelets (and the boys loved being set loose with a sharp needle to do so!).  In the Voyage of the Dawn Treader when Eustace puts on a jewelled bracelet he turns into a dragon, so the kids coloured dragon masks and put them on with their bracelets.

 

The children all seemed to have fun - felting was very popular as was the snow dyeing - and I can't quite believe the mess we managed to make using glitter and glue to decorate dragon scales.  It was an interesting experience for me too and one that has taken up a lot of time and energy.  We had a presentation to the parents last week to show them all that had been going on and so my time at nursery is complete (apart from the next 18 months as a parent).  Back to concentrating on my own work!