Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

MATERIALS & METHODS - A Perspective on Art Education - Activities for Children - Themes & Topics

Drawing & Painting -- Modeling & Sculpting

Fingerpainting -- Mural Making -- Paper-Mâché -- Puppets -- Mask-Making -- Crayon Encaustics -- Crayon Resist Drawing -- Crayon Sgraffito -- Collage -- Mobiles -- Watercolor -- Common Earth Clay -- Salt Ceramic [recipe] -- Clay / plasticene Non-hardening -- Carving in the Round -- Newspaper Modeling -- Paraffin or Wax Sculpture -- Plaster Plaques or Reliefs -- Relief in Plaster -- Relief in Soft Wood -- Repoussé -- Sandcasting -- Working With the Coping Saw or Jigsaw -- Straw/Toothpick Sculpting -- Painting on Window Glass -- Diorama -- Peep Shows -- Whittling -- Wire Sculpture

[From: [Meaning in Crafts. Mattil,, Edward L. Chairman, Dept. of Art, North Texas State University. Third Edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1971.]

Straw or Toothpick Sculpture


Toothpick sculpture is another type of unit sculpture that is extremely fascinating to boys and girls in the upper elementary grades and in junior and senior high school. Probably no creative activity in which the child engages holds a greater fascination. Children become completely engrossed in building with toothpicks, using model airplane cement for joining. They seem to find toothpicks a stimulus in themselves. It is exciting to watch the different methods with which children who are given these materials work. Some will begin simply with a triangle, develop it into a prism, and allow it to grow in all directions into a construction of planes and lines and, sometimes, closed forms.

It seems unimportant to the child as he builds to state what he is building or to be concerned with a conscious reason for building, other than that it seems to satisfy an urge to create something new. Some children who work with toothpicks seem concerned only with making something realistic and recognizable. This is permissible --and even desirable --since the limitations of the materials will help the child to develop new directions. The teacher may stimulate the children even further by giving them small bits of cellophane or colored paper that they can use to define a plane. Older students may use strips of tin, pliable wood, such a balsa, and combine it in structures with translucent tissue paper or cellophane.

The same sort of construction can be done with soda straws or colored toothpicks. In working with airplane cement, it is a good idea to work on pieces of waxed paper, because cemented objects will not adhere to the waxed surface.

[Meaning in Crafts. Mattil,, Edward L. Chairman, Dept. of Art, North Texas State University. Third Edition, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1971.]




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