Name art!

Today at the Saturday art club we created some artwork out of our names - it's something I remember doing myself as a child and thought it would be great fun to try with the kids.

The current Saturday class is a large group of children who range widely in age and ability - the youngest are 4 and the oldest are 12 so as you can imagine it's a real challenge to find a project week after week that they can all do, have fun with and gain maximum benefit from! The class is so busy that we've literally run out of chairs - great news that it's so popular and the children are bringing their friends along but it means we really have run  out of space. Therefore from next half term we're splitting the class - some of the older children will move onto an afternoon class which will be more structured and look at different drawing techniques, cartoon drawing etc and the morning class will remain a fun class aimed at the under 10s exploring and experimenting with different materials, mediums and techniques.

Anyway....back to the name art! I chose it for todays class as it is something that can be easily adapted to the differening ages and abilities - the kids really got into the idea and created some great pieces of artwork!

To do this project I gave each child a sheet of a4 white card, pencil, black marker and charcoal. We also had out on the table coloured pens, oil pastels, crayons, and pencils to add colour plus scissors, glue, wiggly eyes and coloured card

We folded the card lengthways and I showed each child how to write their name in joined up writing along the fold - in pencil first and then going over in charcoal. It was a challenge getting all of them to do this in big letters (they have a tendency to want to do tiny detailed drawing and writing!) and to make sure they kept the bottom of their letters along the fold and joined all the letters up. Some with shorter names could do their middle name too.

Once outlined with charcoal we folded the paper, pressed down to make an imprint and then opened the sheet up again. What we had was then an upside down image of the writing on the opposite side of the paper! I got the children to outline both sides with the black marker to make all of the lines bold and black - we then looked at the shapes created and decided what they were going to be! Most children decided that they would make theirs into "name aliens" but some made other creatures or characters, one did a centipede and one made her name into a fountain!

We then added colour using the different things I'd put out for them to use - most of the children added wiggly eyes and then decided to then cut theirs out and mount it on coloured card which was really effective!

I think the finished results look great - can you tell what some of the names are?