This week we worked with aluminum foil. Aluminum foil lends itself to many incredible types of artwork. Tooling foil repoussé as an example, is a metalworking technique in which soft metals such as aluminum, copper, etc are shaped by hammering from the reversed side to create a design. This technique is also known as embossing. Painting or shaping aluminum is another way to create beautiful art. Our craft consisted of making a “trophy fish”, one which you would find hanging on the wall of a den. We began by gluing some netting on a pre-cut cardboard fish shape. This served as our fish “scales”. We then covered the entire fish with aluminum foil. Once the fish shape was covered, the children rubbed the top of the fish with their fingers to bring the “scales” to the surface. (This is a simple way to do repoussé, creating a simple embossing design with their fingers alone.)
Next we colored our fish with markers, coloring directly on the aluminum. When coloring with markers on aluminum foil, the colors pop and come alive because of the shiny texture of the foil.
Many children chose to make “rainbow” fish, while some chose to use few colors.
The children also had the choice to paint their fish, although paint doesn’t show up as well on foil.
Once the fish was colored/painted, we used glue to mount it on a piece of hard cardboard. The children then painted in the surrounding water scene, using multi-colored hues of blue, green, yellow, etc.
The final touch was adding an eye to our fish. We used a “googly-eye” and glued it on our fish. The children enjoyed making this project. The final results were incredible pieces of art.
No comments:
Post a Comment