Dragon week @ art mini-camp starts with origami, clay sculpting

We started the day looking at a bit of history about dragons and looked at a Viking boat in an Oslo museum. We also talked a bit about the difference between Chinese dragons and medieval ones. Then on to the projects. 


First the origami dragon then one molded in sculpy clay.
It was a complex design for some, easy for others but everyone folded a dragon in the end with a bit of help. The excited faces as the wings and head appeared and squeals of delight replaced the "I can't make it do that" and "it's too hard" comments. We are lucky to have a talented teen to lead the origami part of the camp and keep everyone folding.

To make the sculpy clay dragons we started with aluminum foil to make the base. This gives it a lot less weight to bake and lets the campers focus on the features of the dragon. I got several sparkly blocks which was good and bad. They look wonderful but are very much stiffer. Some of the campers refused to knead the clay when it was stiff and just stuck on the firmer blockier pieces. Not bad effect sometimes but it did not stick as well. There were all kinds of designs created from super cute to a realistic serpent. We  used glass beads for eyes so we would not melt them during the baking. Some of the dragons will get a bit of paint on Thursday when the campers paint their T-shirts.