Sculpting with your young artist
What’s the best way to facilitate a sculpture project with your child or student? Well, here are some general tips from Scribble for building any three-dimensional artwork with a young artist.
STAGGER DISTRIBUTION OF SUPPLIES Don’t give them EVERYTHING all at once. It’s distracting and makes this more of a craft activity vs. a building challenge. For younger artists (2-5yo), you will decide when you pull out which material. Give them bigger, heavier pieces first as the sculptural armature or skeleton and then smaller, lighter materials later as sculptural detail. For 6yo+, let them be part of that decision making. It’ll give them a better understanding for how to build. Encourage them to take time with each material and to be deliberate with their choices. They can even change the form of each material (fold paper, break wood, mold clay) before building with it.
PUSH THEM INTO THE Z AXIS: You’d be surprised at how long it takes us to develop spatial reasoning and understanding. When you give your young artist their sculpture base (the foam core, wood, thick cardboard upon which they’ll build), often, they will revert to covering the base with wooden pieces. They’re filling in the flat empty space of the board and ignoring the abstract space of the Z axis (the 3rd dimension). Remind them to build up, not out. Challenge them with how high they can build. This may result in failure but they will learn the fundamentals of sculpture and keep trying.
GLUE SLOWLY: At Scribble, we use the “glue trick”. Putting on the glue, then pushing down and counting slowly to 10 for each glued attachment. This does several things for their creative process; slows them down, makes them more deliberate, and gives the sculpture time to dry with a more stable glue seal. We also use the “tip test”. Tip over your sculpture to check if it’s stable. If things fall off, we just repair (using the glue trick, of course). You can also use clay as an attachment method (sticking things in it is great!).
KEEP IT ABSTRACT: I would encourage you to not start from a theme or specific subject matter when building. Let your artists assign their own meaning. So instead of “we’re gonna make tree sculptures” go with “we’re gonna make wooden sculptures”. Focus on the material. That’s what they need to be learning about right now. If you do have a “theme” make it very general: figures, machines, animals, etc.
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