Recycled Soda Can Sculptures

Recycled art is working with more soda cans. This time they had to make a sculpture based on a memory and had to incorporate soda cans as a material in any way. The difficulty was getting enough cans. We would have had enough from the recycling bin alone, but another class was also collecting many cans for a separate project. I bought a whole lot of our own tall ice tea cans and soda and told the students to chug it up so they could have some sculpture supplies. I don't think they were too disappointed. Each student brought something completely different to their project which is always fun to witness.

choo! choo!

ba dum ching!

oink oink

musical notes

rainbow feather

Are you picking up those alien transmissions?

The golden toy duck

A hat that only fits if you wear a bun in your hair.

Not quite a peaceful coffin for eternal rest.

Gesture People Sculptures

On this project the intro class learned about gesture drawing and human proportions. We made wire with paper mache sculpture people. I'm always surprised at how different each student makes their art and the ideas they have, which can sometimes be very strange. I got this original lesson idea from student teaching 6th grade art last year. Ninth grade enjoyed this too. They really like getting their hands messy.

All the bodies...

Smurfette 

Zombie!

Did we just become best friends?

The elusive white ninja

Uh... lol, some students' ideas

gotta catch 'em all!

Thank you, thank you very much.

purple chicken pox?

Shiny, puff ball person

Dance Par-tay! Can arms bend like that?

What every girl wants, their very own boyfriend doll.

Facebook Like Man

Soda Can Flowers

Recycled Art continues to explore beauty in "garbage". Soda cans were turned into a beautiful garden of flowers by the front desk. Each student was supposed to create 1-3 flowers and dedicate each to a special person in their life. This is a spin on a lesson that was introduced to me during my student teaching last year from my cooperating teacher. I had the students learn about the poppy installation at the Tower of London in 2014 (google it if you don't know what that is. It's super cool). Instead of making clay flowers, since we lack that material, we made aluminum.

Selfie Half-zies Portraits

Here I wanted the students to learn both pencil shading and color pencil mixing for skin tones while understanding face proportions. It all started with a selfie (or regular picture if they didn't want to selfie). They folded the image in half and symmetrically drew each side of their face, one in pencil and the other in color pencil. I'd say they turned out pretty fun looking.

Found Object Collage

One of my favorite projects so far in recycled art. The final product is an awesome collaboration of found objects. Each students got one square board to create a meaningful collage of random found objects. First we discussed a few artists such as Louise Nevelson and Brian Petro, then we dove right in. Spray paint... that was a bit of a difficult accomplishment (weather probs).  

Non-Objective Cardboard

To explore cardboard, the recycled art class began with some nonobjective sculptures just to familiarize themselves with the material. It's harder than it looks to make something with no representation. Sculptures always tend to look like something, but each person may see something different. 

 

Intro Art Beginnings

Unit 1 in the intro class begins with non-objective art and exploring mediums and techniques based on the elements of art. Here we have some charcoal form still lives, collagraph textured prints, and color wheel mandalas. Just a few of many. They are all doing so awesome. 

Cerealism

Recycled Art class began with some abstract "Cerealism" art. Reconstruction of old cereal boxes. Kinda like stained glass, eh? Turned out pretty cool.