Paper Mache Fish

Last year the other elementary art teachers and I got together to rewrite-well, write a kindergarten curriculum. While paging through out pile of textbooks, I found an image of a bird sculpture using pop tabs as the feathers. Of course, I would never be able to find that image again, but it stuck with me. One of my colleagues commented that it would make a great fish too.

I have been spending most of my prep time lately preparing for our art shows. One of my schools will be having a Hawaiian theme. I'll post about that in a bit. Here's my third grade project for the show:

I am spray painting the pop tabs for the kids. I originally thought I'd have them tape the tabs to cereal boxes and paint them themselves. However, the paint I ordered for metal dried looking all splotchy and not so wonderful. I decided spray painting them in advance would just be easier.

They will be using a bottle for the fish's body, adding newspaper forms to make the fins and tail. After adding a layer of newspaper with Art Paste, they will add a layer of paper towel. I like this technique, as they can see where they still need a second layer, and it covers some of the writing on the newspaper so they need less layers of paint. A technique I like even more is using roll paper for the second layer. That eliminates the need for painting altogether. We don't have many bulletin boards, so we also don't have much roll paper. I made my fish's eyes out of plastic bottle caps and buttons.

I was thinking of using dowels and 2X4s as a base for the fish, but it's really hard to give it good balance, plus I'd have to find someone to cut the wood for me. With a HUGE donation of large yogurt containers, I decided to use them instead. They'll paper mache over them, paint them brown, and add sand.

I used Tacky Glue to add the eyes, scales, and shells to the sculpture. I just painted a layer of Art Paste on top of the brown paint and sprinkled the sand on the yogurt container.