We prepared small cups of clear acrylic, but white glue will work just as well. The wires easily poked through the plaster into the foamy interior. After clean up, they were hard enough to be put on the leg bases. Students needed about 2 to 3 layers of plaster. I had pre-cut 2 x 4 inch pieces and stressed smoothing each layer as it was added. The next day the birds were covered with plaster gauze. They needed to be shredded to about the size of postage stamps. When bodies were done and left to dry, students pained the bases, and shredded colored tissue paper of the colors they would use for their birds noted in their sketches. While students formed bodies from 2 packs of Model Magic, I drilled blocks of wood with 2 holes to accept a heavy gauge wire that would become legs. They also did a sketch with color that we shared and discussed. Nosey might be a pointy long beak, curiosity, a long neck, and so forth. Athletic might be strong wings or long running legs. Students wrote a list of 10 of their personality traits, and then for each one what a bird might have that would express that trait. The powerful wings and short neck of the falcon made it one of the fastest birds on Earth, and the slow dimwitted dodo helped it get extinct. The big eyes of the owl helped it see at night and catch prey. The long neck of the flamingo helped it get shrimp. We explored the world of birds from raptors to canaries, flamingos to dodos, and kept asking about how the form of the bird helped it do what it did.
They did learn to work with Model Magic for the first time and got thinking about birds. I asked the kids what these birds told us about themselves, and the ultimate answer was that other than their choice of colors, very little.
Summer Art Camp ages 7 to 16: We began this project with a warm-up exercise using some Model Magic and feathers to make some cookie-cutter birds, form and ice-cream cone, pinch a beak, stick in a feather, wire legs, a dash of water color, and they were done.
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