Saving Money on Art Supplies/Assemblage and Collage By Sharon Jeffus Copyright 2010 Do you want to economize on art supplies and yet have the best art lessons that your children will love? Here are some ideas to incorporate in your curriculum: There are six elements of art that you continually want to emphasize in your child’s learning no matter what the age: line, shape, texture, value, form, space and shape. These elements can be taught together in a collage project using leftovers from your daily paper supply. If you take the elements of art of line, shape and texture, you can emphasize not only master works of art, but composition as well. Materials needed to create your collage are as follows: old magazines, fabric and ribbon swatches, white craft glue, scissors, markers, old newspapers, markers (some can be nearly used up), a large cardboard piece to put the collage on, pieces of foil, candy bar wrappers, etc. 1. Create your theme. What is your collage about? You can choose a very focused and realistic theme as this website: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reach_for_the_stars.jpg You can choose a more abstract theme such as the one below: Kurt Schwitters, Das Undbild , 1919 Can you see the three elements of line, shape and texture in this collage? What is the center of interest? What do you think the artist is saying? When children look at a painting by the master artist Van Gogh, they see an excellent example of using line. Did you know you can even copy a Van Gogh using spaghetti? You can go to this website to see a Van Gogh: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Vincent_van_Gogh_Starry_Ni ght.jpg You can go to this website to see a master work by Cezanne:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Paul_C%C3%A9zann e_193.jpg How many shapes do you see in the picture? Can you see circles, cylinders, squares and rectangles? Finally the third element to use is texture. Go to these websites and see the texture created by Durer: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Durer_Young_Hare.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/D%C3%BCrer_- _Rhinoceros.jpg 2. Remember to use the three elements we talked about in your collage. After you have defined your theme, create your collage. A collage is an assemblage of different parts coming into a whole design. Use your glue and be sure things are glued down correctly. You may even need to use a glue gun on some items. Keep your theme and center of interest in mind during the whole assignment. Assemblage Delightful three dimensional forms can be made from just using collected scraps. Materials needed for your project are follows: You will need cardboard scraps, toilet and paper towel empty rolls, empty spools of thread, string or jute, plastic butter containers or meat trays that are washed, tin foil, glue gun and white craft glue, scissors, metallic acrylic paint, etc. The picture above is a drawing of an assemblage sculpture created by an artist named Nevelson. You can talk about machines and how they work and then have your children create their own machine out of scraps. What do you think of this assemblage work made out of bicycles? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rauschenberg3.JPG You can go to this website to see one of the most famous pieces of assemblage in American history: http://americanart.si.edu/images/1970/1970.353.1_1a.jpg Hampton's believed in the Second Coming of Christ and his desire was to build The Throne as a monument to the return of Christ on earth. It is in the Smithsonian. It is one of the most famous pieces of folk art in American history. "Where there is no vision, the people perish" — Proverbs 29:18 (King James Version) is posted on the wall of Hampton's rented garage where he built the structure in 1950 in northwest Washington. For 14 years, Hampton would work as a janitor and then go home and work for 5 or 6 hours on this throne. He had been building this throne out of various old materials like aluminum and gold foil, old furniture, various pieces of cardboard, mirrors, light bulbs, etc. He had pinned it together with tacks, glue, pins and tape. Be sure you have a square piece of paper and use the diagram below to build a throne or chair out of cardstock paper or cardboard. Maybe your children won’t come up with something this grand, but they will enjoy making a piece of sculpture out of scraps! Coming next: Don’t throw away those used markers!!!! Starting August 24, 2010, you can take internet art classes with your family at home or a group class. Go to visualmanna.com or contact us at [email protected] for information. .