Foil Relief

Living near the beach gives us access to "all things ocean"!! One of my favorite items is the conch shell. This summer I was visiting Cambria, another beach town a few hours north of here and bought a large bag of shells. At the time I thought about having 5th graders use them for observational sketching. Instead, I decided to use them this week as inspiration for yarn line designs to create our foil relief pieces that I posted about awhile back here.

First, we looked at a lot of pictures of conch shells using Google images. I also had real shells at all the work tables. Students identified curvy lines, little rounded bumps and spirals. They used spirals in their last project a week ago, so this became an extension of our Hundertwasser discussion.

I asked students to follow Paul Klee's quote, "A line is a dot that went for a walk," and start their line on one side of their adhesive board. Using lines like the shells, we tried to move the line back and forth, ending on the opposite side from which we started. I asked the kids to leave at least a finger space between yarn lines and between the edge of the paper and any yarn line ( to give the foil space to "settle into"). I also asked them NOT to cross over lines.

Students carefully placed the foil on the board, from the center outward, molding it to the yarn. The board was adhesive with a peel-off back, so we didn't need glue. Hallelujia!! I've had enough glue for this week!! This foil is delicate sandwich foil (already cut to size) and we tried successfully not to rip it. They folded the edges around to the back of the board.

Students outlined their yarn line with a Sharpie marker and then I asked them to use permanent markers (analogous colors and black) to make "fanciful" dot and/or line designs. Most remembered to use those colors, but a few got carried away and had VERY colorful designs (but all was good and everybody left happy!!)

I liked the way this boy used negative space to create his dots. Clever! He was also the only one who had a solid area of color.

This was his desk partner and he had a very deliberate plan for his art. I love the large, dramatic dots! What a great example to use for "emphasis."