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.

Origami success at art camp @ WBCL

We then tried a dog face with ears. Lastly we let them chose 2-3 sheets of the pre-marked paper to take home and do more folding. I had several books from the library available for check-out and they all went home with the aspiring artists. 


The Arts mini-camp is held at the Wells Branch Community Library and taught by Dianne Koehler.

When I was given a pack of origami paper last winter, I knew we had to try this at camp. About half of the kids said they'd done origami at some point but no one could do it without directions or a book. We decided to make simple items so everyone would be able to be successful. 


Keighla led them through information about Origami and the kinds of papers we had the began the folds to make a cup and a hat.