Artist Study: Alberto Giacometti

We started a large sculpture project this week based on the bronze sculptures of Alberto Giacometti. The first step was to talk about Giacometti's style. We compared his animal sculptures (seen below) to those of more realistic bronzes. We then came up with a vocabulary to discuss his work ("long and skinny", "stretched out") and talked about how this style makes us feel.

Then it was time to get to work. Learners started by bending pipe cleaners to create the basic shape of their sculpture. Some masking tape was used to secure parts where two pipe cleaners met. We had airplanes, houses, butterflies, snakes, fish, many abstract designs and more. Then learners used plaster wrap to cover all parts of their sculpture. (This was a lot to do in one day. Next time I'm separate them in two sessions.)

adding the plaster sheets on top of the pipe cleaners

Next time, I'll put newspaper down on the tables beforehand!

A few days later, once the plastic fully dried we covered them in black paint.

The last step was rubbing a bronze paint on the top of the sculptures. (I did this last step as the paint I bought didn't seem very kid-friendly and I wanted to control the amount used.) And viola! we had some bronze sculptures! The kids then titled their artworks, made small plaques for the title and displayed our work.