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Posts Tagged ‘collage’

A Wise way to recycle: Make a rubbish owl or two

31 March 2011

I’ve been making Rubbish Pictures on a larger scale recently and so needed to get my head back into smaller scale pieces.

I had the fortune, like all Christmas’s coming at once, of being donated an entire carrier bag full of old postage stamps recently and these will be featuring heavily across my pictures in the coming weeks. They add an amazing texture and the details on them are just beautiful.

This then, was the first attempt of a new range of Rubbish Pictures, featuring characters I’ve not tried before. The wise Owl will be the first in a series of woodland creatures. Needless to say, it’s good to be back knee deep in rubbish :-)

Racing Cars is just Rubbish…

10 February 2011

Following on from creating a ‘rubbish’ scene from Peter Pan, I’d barely peeled the PVA glue from my finger tips before I was back to sorting through rubbish for a new commission – another piece of Nursery Art, this time a McLaren Race Car for a little Formula 1 fan.

This piece is another larger format picture measuring a metre across and as with all Rubbish Pictures, is created entirely out of recycled domestic materials.

This is my first attempt at a ‘real life’ mechanical and comparable object. Anyone familiar with this blog will know that I usually create animals and characters that are pretty much made up as I go along so I approached this piece with trepidation at trying to replicate a recognizable car was quite a challenge, whilst also trying to maintain my own style, and the obvious restriction of only using ‘rubbish’!

To commission your own picture, do check out ‘Rubbish Pictures’ and get in touch :-)

A ‘rubbish’ scene from Peter Pan

25 January 2011

Standing at a metre across, this week I have completed one of the larger scaled Rubbish Pictures I’ve attempted in a while. This piece was commissioned as a piece of Nursery Art for a child who loves the story of Peter Pan. There were various scenes from the book that I considered, the crocodile swallowing the clock was an alternative option, which I may still yet explore. It was however, the magic of flying that prevailed to be the classic image remembered from the story by everybody I asked, so I stuck with this traditional view of the characters flying over the London skyline.

As with all Rubbish Pictures, the scene is created entirely out of recycled domestic ‘rubbish’. Peter Pan’s clothes for examples are made out of 56 individually cut ‘leaves’ from old postage stamps, garden peas wrappings, cereal cartons and gardening articles from the Sundays supplements. His bag and shoes are fashioned from a frozen Oven Chips bag and his hair is a page from the original Peter Pan story book.


The moon too, makes use of a very old battered copy of the original book, re purposed along with bubble wrap, potato food packaging, crisps wrappers and old shirt buttons.

With the inevitable sprinkle of glitter (fairy dust) to finish things off. I hope this piece will make it’s new little owner very happy…

Never mind How to Train Your Dragon. Try making one. Out of Crisps Wrappers.

15 December 2010

The last of my batch of Rubbish Pictures is now complete and ready for Christmas delivery… possibly cutting it a bit fine I know, but let’s not dwell on that!

This was a fun picture to make. It’s part of a set of two with ‘Rubbish Fairy’, forming a set of bespoke nursery art, commissioned by a lovely family for their children and created entirely out of recycled food packaging (the children’s preferred food products – making it very personal) that has been collected from their kitchen over a period of weeks.

The dragon sports individually cut scales from Organix crisps wrappers, pizza packaging, yoghurt pots, scraps of fabric and biscuit wrappings. His fire is entirely squeezy yoghurt sachets and sweets wrappers and he sits upon a stony mound created from a Boden Sale Catalogue….

He’s a completely unique and green character, in every sense of the word and this particular design is one of my favourites to date. I hope his new owner enjoys him and that Santa eases him down the chimney with care!

For more information on Rubbish Pictures, check out the web page and feel free to get in touch with any ideas for commissioned work you may have, all interest is welcomed and quotes are obligation free :-)

A week of ‘Rubbish’ Art

02 December 2010

Last week I was privileged to have the opportunity to work with an entire school of children, during their ‘Art Week’. Eight workshops, back to back, 200 odd artists, plus a school wide art competition culminating in an exhibition for all the parents. No mean feat and a little daunting, but a hugely rewarding and enjoyable experience.

The theme of the week was ‘Recycling’ and the emphasis was to show the children that Art can be created in so many different forms and can be created out of a wide range of materials, much of which doesn’t need to cost a thing and is readily available. It’s a skill that was the general rule for the foundation of art skills a generation ago, but one that seems to be gradually disappearing in a world of ready made ‘craft packs’ that cost a fortune and require no imagination  whatsoever.

Preparations began weeks ago, with detailed lesson plans written and example pieces created so that I could ensure that the tasks I was considering were age and ability appropriate. (Plus of course, there was a lot of  hoarding of crushed drinks cans and yoghurt pots to be done)

The week itself was a busy, but oh so fun time. We managed to squeeze in giant format collages highlighting the plight of the British Bumble Bee, an entire ocean of tin can sea creatures, a huge newspaper hand print Christmas tree, complete with ‘rubbish’ baubles, a set of life sized Angels, an installation of ‘Wishes Upon Stars’, a plethora of dried pulses & PVA Christmas Puddings, and not to forget an entire series of fantastic portraits created entirely out of food….

The school is now looking pretty amazing, A ‘Rubbish’ Art Gallery if ever there was one! I’m very proud of the children and their achievements. More pictures can be seen here, on the school’s own website.

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The most effective Art Workshops I find, tend to be those I run in line with the particular part of the curriculum that a class might be studying at that time anyway. The Art can then enhance the learning going on across the rest of the subjects and bring the whole subject together for the children in a very enjoyable and fulfilling fashion. Luckily, one of the classes I worked with have been studying ‘Robots’ this term, writing stories about them, studying the mechanics of them, creating circuits for them…. so it was very simple for me to fit in a session that worked with their theme.

‘Rubbish Robots’ were born, where each child was given a characteristic of a robot, drawn out of  a hat such as ‘A depressed Robot’, A ‘Happy Robot’ A broken Robot’….. and then set the task to create that character, as a large scale collage, completely made out of recycled domestic rubbish. The results were stunning. A collection of squashed tin cans, patches of fabric, food packaging, buttons, zips, screws and bolts took form in a sea of pva glue, to give us an army of 30 beautiful, vibrant Rubbish Robots, that our inspiration, Eric Joyner, would’ve been proud to have had in his Robot line up :-)

Wish upon a star and make yourself an angel…

01 December 2010

Two of my favourite Art Workshops from the recent series I worked on with primary school children, (on the theme of Recycling and using alternative materials…) were ‘Wishes Upon Stars’ and ‘Angels’.

Both workshops were with groups of younger children, ranging in age from 5 years to 7 years old. They’re a challenging bunch of course, as at this tender age, the attention span tends to be rather limited! However what they may lack in focus they make up for in boundless enthusiasm. It’s just a question of recognizing that and channeling it, and away you go! These workshops were serious FUN.

My first group cut out giant stars from recycled packaging cardboard, which they then wrapped in paper mache and painted gold and silver. Each child wrote out a wish on a simple luggage tag which would then hang on string underneath their star. The wishes were all something to do with their environment to fit in with our workshop theme. Wishes ranged from ‘ I wish people wouldn’t eat animals’ to ‘I wish people would remember to turn taps off!’.

The whole group’s stars were then strung along a long pole creating our very own simple but powerful Art Installation. Fantastic.

My second group, the younger of the two, enjoyed sticking giant sheets of newspaper together, lying on it and then drawing around each other to create body shapes. These were fundamentally the ‘Angels’ but were further transformed by large cardboard Wings, covered in bubble wrap ‘feathers’.

The newspaper Angels, displayed along with the hanging stars created an overall body of work that looks great and has attracted much positive feedback. These simple Art challenges have proven to me that it’s the initial ideas that are the important part of the process when trying to create Art with children. Keeping things simple and allowing individuals to work confidently and enthusiastically within a larger group on small tasks can yield absolutely fantastic results.

A drop in a ‘Rubbish’ Ocean…

30 November 2010

Continuing the theme of recycling rubbish to make art, I ran an Art workshop with a group of 28 year 2 children (aged 6 to 7 years old) last week where we created an entire ocean out of recycled domestic ‘rubbish’ and then filled it with beautiful squished tin can and bubble wrap sea creatures. The final piece measured around 1.5m square and consisted of three panels.

The children were split into two teams. One team worked on the background, where they collaged together blue and green food packaging and old fabric and wool, to create the watery scenery, whilst the other team used acrylic paints to cover squashed drinks cans, and cut out painted bubble wrap for the fins / tentacles of their creatures. The two teams swapped roles half way through so that every child could feel that they had contributed to every part of the final picture. With a hefty dose of leftover ’sparkly bits’, donated by a local shoe designer, the whole piece was ready to hang …and I have to say, looked absolutely stunning.

Don’t mess with your food. Create ART out of it!

28 November 2010

As part of my series of workshops last week, (on the theme of recycling and using alternative materials in art), I worked with a group of 26 children to create ‘Food Art’. My assistant artists were all aged 10 and 11 and were wonderfully enthusiastic and engaged throughout. I have worked with this particular group many times before and so wanted to find something completely different for them to do. Inspiration came from the Colorado based, ‘food artist’ Jason Baalman. His portait of Rachel Ray made me want to find out more about him and share his work with the children, and when I found the video of him creating Conan O’Brian out of cheese puffs, I knew I was onto an idea they would love. Every child was asked to bring in something to contribute to the materials pool. We had a huge array of random things to work with from cereals and pulses to fruit and vegetables to tubes of tomato paste.

Using alternative materials helped no end with helping the children understand their use of colour. Their first task was to create a portrait. A simple character, which could be a full body, or just a face. A problem I often encounter when teaching this age group is that when I give them a palette of paints, they often will just jump straight in with the ’skin tones’ and paint away without giving any thought to which actual ’skin tone’ they might really need to be using. By taking away all ‘paint’ and providing them instead with a palette of objects, they had to really think about what they were going to create, what objects would provide the colour they actually wanted to represent. It was an extreme way of proving a point. But it worked!

After the initial set task, the children were given free rein to create whatever they liked. The results ranged from an amazing African plain scene to a Bart Simpson complete with skateboard. For once, his catch phrase ‘eat my shorts’ really could have applied, given that they were made out of broccoli….

The plight of the British Bumble Bee is just….Rubbish

28 November 2010

On Monday, I taught an art workshop to a class of year 5 (age 9-10 years) artists. It was the first in my week of workshops in the school on the theme of ‘recycling’ and so it was important to start as I meant to go on and create an impact. The subject for this class was the plight of the British Bumble Bee. This class of children had recently been on a week long residential trip where they had found out all about bee keeping so it was lucky coincidence that I could continue this theme with them.
We created a colossal picture – over 12 ft wide and 4 ft tall, made up in separate panels. The rules of the piece were that it was to be created out of collaged materials and that these materials were to be recycled domestic rubbish, similar to my own Rubbish Pictures. I wanted to show the children that art could be made out of anything. They were  enthusiastic but a little doubtful at first – it soon became apparent however, that this piece was going to be colourful, and vibrant and even the staunchest of doubters was soon converted.

32 ‘assistants’ is a lot of children to keep an eye on, fortunately I had a squad of lovely helpful parent helpers and classroom assistants on board so I was able to split the group into teams. Whilst one team was working on collaging a background of green and blue food packaging, another was creating a ‘hive’ out of used brown packaging cardboard, another was creating a swarm of bees out of squashed drinks casn and bubble wrap, and the last team was making flowers and shrubs, again out of squashed tin cans.

The air of excitement and fun in the room was just lovely to be a part of and whilst it may have appeared somewhat chaotic, as the picture came together, the children became more focused, determined to finish and totally enthused about the project they were all a part of.

Once complete and hung in the hall to be the first exhibit of many that would be created during the week, this piece drew many appreciative comments and looks simply wonderful. I’m very, very proud of all the artist involved, they did a fantastic job. Lucky Bumble Bees to have them on their side.

A Rubbish Fairy

20 November 2010

This week has been somewhat hectic as I am preparing to do a full week of teaching art workshops next week and the preparation work has been something to behold!

However, time is marching on so I have also made a start on my latest Rubbish Picture. Another commission for Christmas. The brief this time: to create some bespoke ‘nursery art’ to go onto a little girls bedroom wall and to be made entirely out of bits and pieces of domestic rubbish, relevant to her. This fairy, therefore,  consists of wrappers from her favourite snacks, gift wrapping from her birthday presents, ribbons & sequins, as well of course, as a good dollop of prerequisite fairy dust obviously…

It’ll soon be dry and finished. Here’s hoping she enjoys it!

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