Saturday 24 July 2010

Modelling and painting.

Last night as I laid in bed with Rye, we had conversations on naming the totem leopard that sits in the corner of our room - I thought we'd settled on Felix, but this morning Rye tells the cat's name is..... "Rye"  hmm.  Then we talked about what we'd like to do today.  Unsurprisingly, Rye opted for painting, so to jazz it up a bit I suggested we do some modelling too.

I had initially planned to make it an activity my charge could join in - but when she arrived she was loud, boisterous and clearly sitting down and painting would be a disaster, so she and Rye ran around causing chaos, and me regularly chasing them out of the house, mock yelling, "too loud, too loud, out, out, out..."  lol.  Which, naturally they thought was hilarious and so kept coming inside.

Once the little lass had gone, we got the clay out; an immediate hit with Rye.  We've salt doughed, plasticine modelled (yuck) and beeswax modelled before but not really used clay before.  Rye loved it.
He squeegeed, he rolled out, he cut out, and crafted.  All excellent fine motor skills, not to mention stretching those imaginative muscles.
We'll paint these once dry.
Rye said this was a sofa.
And then after the modelling we did some wet on wet painting.  I thought I'd hit on a genius idea, in that last time I was in Works, I bought some watercolour boards. Perfect, so I thought for wet on wet painting.  Nah, they're rubbish.  The paper is far too thin and not good qualify so the watercolour does not bleed across the page the way it should.  Nonetheless, Rye had fun:


So I'll go back to the drawing board.... hehehe, sorry couldn't resist - and buy Rye some good quality water colour paper.

And our other plan for today... walk to the shop and buy some chocolate.  A very good plan, methinks.

2 comments:

Fiona said...

Love the clay modeling and its a shame the boards didn't work out for painting. Is it air drying clay or will you bake it in the oven? We have never used modeling clay (but I am totally with you on the plasticine thing!), so I am keen to try.

Joxy34 said...

yes air drying. I found it a little difficult to manipulate, but kneading it for a bit with drips of water soon made it a bit easier to work with.. although it is not the same as normal clay. But for kids and basic crafting its a good option.