We had the idea to make a story, that’s right not just write the story but actually create the scenes as we go along.
We asked the kids if they had any story ideas and fortunately they did! So they came up with the first sentence “ Tom the shepherd was walking his sheep by the sea when he came across a ghost ship”. Then the ideas began to flow. It’s amazing how such a short sentence can create so many images.
With every art project we do there’s always a few steps we have to take before we begin. First you have to decide what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. As a group we started to ask questions, what was it going to look like, how big it was going to be, what was going to go where, who will do what etc.
We decided it would be good to get the kids to picture what Tom is going to look like, so they can start to build a character.
So they started drawing their own interpretations of Tom! It was so interesting to see how each of them saw him.
The drawings were so great we made them draw the whole scene how they saw it, i have to say there were some interesting ships!
Once we had our preliminary sketches it was time to get cracking! We usually use a lot of different materials for these kind of projects, like wood, sponge, paper, tissue, felt, fabric, paint and a lot more.
The next stage was figuring how to apply each material to the character’s persona, for instance we used a thick layer of sponge underneath a pre painted piece of fabric and added little curled up bits of wire for the feet and tail, these became the sheep.
The kids went a bit wild with the color of the sheep’s wool but that’s what made it so creative.
Tom was created out of a wire base and fabric, since there was only one of Tom everyone had a go at making different parts of him.
William crafted the metal base, Layla designed and painted Tom’s face, Michael painted the material for his clothes and Eliza cut it out and glued it. After we had our characters sorted out, it was time for the ships. As an exercise in drawing we looked at ships, old and new, and drew them.
After the exercise, the kids drew the ships that will be in the picture.
Since they are ghost ships we thought it would be a great idea to give them a really spooky looking background, so to make it even more fun we tried shadow theatre for the first time.
Once the kids drew out the ghost ships on card we cut out the bits we wanted to see and all the details, this was also a great exercise in positive and negative space. We had to be very careful that we didn’t cut out the wrong bit!
The ships and the sheep were finished. Here comes the fun bit! Assembling it all together and taking the video!