Creepy Crawly Critter Sculptures

This week, we started a new project which will encompass creating an insect character and sculpting it out of paper mache.  From there, we will write a story about our creepy crawly critters and create a digital slideshow.  First, we talked about how artists interpret insects in nature.

Some artists use actual insects in their art!  Some create sculptures out of found objects.

Student worksheet with a ladybug drawing

After we looked at the slideshow and watched the video of insect possibilities, we can see that possibilities are endless.  Not only are there millions of species to choose from, but Mrs. Luker and I are giving the students artistic license to create an insect that may or may not exist in nature.  Can a beetle have a mohawk?  Why not.  Extra arms and legs?  Go for it!

Student worksheet with an insect with extra legs.

As we create these insects, there are a series of questions to answer on our worksheets.  Besides aesthetic qualities  what kind of personality do you think your insect might have?  Thinking about the personality of the insect might affect how the insect will look.  How can artists convey emotion through aesthetic qualities?  For example, and aggressive or angry spider might have big teeth, big hairy eyebrows and squinting eyes.  Thinking about the personality will also help us to come up with stories about our sculptures for the digital slideshow story.  Next time we'll work on sculpting these insects using newspaper and plaster.