Abstract Cardboard Masks

Ella, 2nd grade

Raya, kindergarten

 Charlize, 2nd grade

 Kiran, 1st grade

(This shape reminds me of Keith Haring's dogs - Love it!)

 Harper, kindergarten

 Kate, kindergarten

 Thalia, 3rd grade

Katherine, kindergarten

(My kinder girls were very adamant about wanting their masks to be "cute")

Love the blond locks

Mira, 3rd grade

Scott, 5th grade

 Got cardboard? Here's a fun project to utilize any scrap Amazon or pizza boxes. Parents can help younger children cut out the base or face shape of these masks. Since these are abstract, get creative with your shape. Have your children divide their face into sections with a permanent marker and paint with different colors. Facial features can be cut with scissors using thin cardboard using leftover cereal, soda or cracker boxes. Encourage them to be creative with their shapes for eyes, nose, mouth and ears. These can be colored with markers, oil pastels or paint. 

Once their facial features are cut out, they can play around with where they'll be placed on their base. These are abstract, so eyes don't have to be side by side. Have fun! Now they can be glued down using regular school glue. Last, if you have a junk drawer, you can encourage children to embellish their masks with buttons, bits of hardware, soda can tops or anything else you can think to utilize. 

This was a lot of fun for my wide age range groups. Everyone felt successful and it is a great way to teach children that they can create art from a variety of recycled materials.

*Note: For inspiration, check out the work of Kimmy Cantrell and Eric Straw!

  Recycled food and beverage boxes for facial features - easy for the kids to cut out

Got Cardboard?

Recycled Cardboard Art Projects

If you're like me, you have some leftover cardboard boxes from the holidays, courtesy of Amazon. 

(I asked my friend who works for UPS, if they are bitter about Amazon Prime and the onslaught of deliveries they bring, not to mention the 2-day delivery guarantee. He just smiled politely.) 😉

I love coming up with ideas to utilize this humble material. I think it makes a great canvas for a variety of projects. And there is something so satisying about creating "something" from "nothing". Once cut out with an X-acto knife, this tropical fish was created using some craft acrylics and magazine pages with a 2 inch circle punch for colorful scales. I raided my craft closet and used various materials to add some extra punch: puff, paint, sequins and glue combined with black paint for outlining. You could use whatever you have on hand. I glued some twine to the back so it could be hung. This would be a great project to do with the kids over the rest of your winter break.

More Cardboard Creative Fun!

Click on the links below for the original posts

1.) Butterflies

2.) Kimmy Cantrell and Eric Straw Inspired Masks

3.) Abstract Masks

4.) Recycled Cardboard Birds

Abstract Cardboard Masks

Ella, 2nd grade

Raya, kindergarten

 Charlize, 2nd grade

 Kiran, 1st grade

(This shape reminds me of Keith Haring's dogs - Love it!)

 Harper, kindergarten

 Kate, kindergarten

 Thalia, 3rd grade

Katherine, kindergarten

(My kinder girls were very adamant about wanting their masks to be "cute")

Love the blond locks

Mira, 3rd grade

Scott, 5th grade

It's been six years since I have done an abstract cardboard mask project inspired by artist, Kimmy Cantrell shown here. Recently I saw some Fantastic masks over at Handmakery. They inspired me to give it another go with my Unique Materials Art Fun classes. I loved the way they layered facial features on separated pieces of scrap cardboard, so I had the kids create their masks in a similar way. The bases were created on squares cut from large cardboard boxes. (I've earned my black belt as a dumpster diving ninja) ;) We looked at examples of Cantrell's clay work before creating a unique face shape. These were divided into sections with permanent marker and painted with acrylics or shaded with pastels. 

I then handed out thin pieces of cardboard from boxes of cereal, oatmeal, soda ect... It prompted a funny discussion about grits. (My husband is from the south, but none of these west coast kids had ever heard of them.) I encouraged the kids to make their features, bold and unique. They added color with oil pastels and cut them out. They played around with their arrangement before gluing these down.

Kimmy Cantrell uses unique hardware accents in many of his masks. So I provided a variety of fun embellishments to use in their masks. Key earrings were all the rage. (My mom works at a hardware store in case you were wondering) Miss Mary used a glue gun for these heavy pieces.

This was a lot of fun for my wide age range groups. Everyone felt successful and it was a great way to teach the children that they could create art from a variety of recycled materials.

  Recycled food and beverage boxes for facial features - easy for the kids to cut out

Splattered Dalmations

My Messy Art Fun Camp is over. I had a wide age range for this class, K-6th. We created Kimmy Cantrell salt dough masks, pinch pot clay creatures, non-objective art collages and glue and chalk pastel creations. But the favorite project for many was the splattered paint dalmations. The children splattered 2 long sheets of construction paper on day 1. Once dry, they cut out a simple body shape, head and ears. Eyes and nose were added and charcoal shadows. They were given free reign in creating their background.

Kimmy Cantrell Inspired Salt Dough Masks

This mask was painted black first, and then gone over in metallics and brights

Key accented head

I have done cardboard masks inspired by the work of sculptor, Kimmy Cantrell. I had seen some wonderful clay masks at Mrspicasso's Art Room. I thought I'd give it a try with salt dough with my Messy Art Fun camp. After creating a face base we formed bold facial features using small pieces of dough. We used bits of hardware like Cantrell to accent our faces. We baked them until hard and painted them with acrylics. A final coat of Mod Podge gave them a nice glossy finish. These were a lot of fun to create.

Cardboard Masks Inspired by Kimmy Cantrell and Eric Straw

The above masks were created by 3rd-5th graders.

My 3rd-5th graders looked at the masks of artists Kimmy Cantrell and Eric "Straw" (Strawczynski). They come from completely different walks of life, yet have distinct parallels. Cantrell is an African American artist from Atlanta Georgia. Once a purchasing manager for Target, he decided on the heels of job change and divorce to reconnect with his love of clay. Vases evolved into bowls and bowls into his current niche, faces. Now as a full time artist, Cantrell creates clay masks with both tribal and Cubist influences. They have wonderful bold graphic shapes, interesting textures and eye popping candied glazes. I knew instantly my students would enjoy his primitive and edgy take on the human face. Minus a kiln, I decided to do a recycled cardboard approach to these masks. Literally a day before my class, I came across the fabulous work of Eric Straw from St. Martha Catholic School Artists (this is why I so love the give and take of art teacher blogging). What amazing luck to find an artist whose masks have both tribal and sometimes Cubist roots, bold features.....and that uses cardboard and only cardboard! Straw, (as his friends call him) who worked as a professor and researcher in social sciences, turned to antique toys to escape this left brained world. He not only became an expert in that genre but began creating his own marionettes, busts and masks. His work contains bold imagery as Cantrell's, combined with a lot of humor. This humor would go far with my spirited and lively group of 8 to 10 year olds.

Today my students mapped out their face shape on cardboard and got to work on creating their unique facial features. Some did this directly on their cardboard. Others used remnants of cereal and cracker boxes and cut out their facial features. Paint and oil pastels were offered to add color to their masks. I took Kimmel's use of large nails on some of his masks a bit further. I offered keys, nuts, bolts, pennies, soda can tops, hooks and even fettucini noodles (the hair on the 2nd mask) and quite a few more items to echo the humor of Straw's pieces. Many of these items slip easily between the corrugated cardboard. My kids are off to a great start. I will have some wonderful unique masks to post next week.