To make a square from a rectangular piece of paper you need to:

Your artwork from today's lesson could be described as:

What is the correct term for the skills that let you coordinate between your eyes and your hands, to create precise, detailed work?

Sculpture: Paper Manipulation

Key Stage 3

Art and design

3D sculpture: developing fine motor skills

﻿- Welcome to Art with me, Mr. Di Salvo. Today, we're going to be looking at paper manipulation. So let's see what we can do. I'm guessing we don't have lots of resources at home, but I'm hoping and kind of guessing that you've got some paper. So things you're gonna need, paper, paper, and more paper, about three or four sheets, if I'm honest. some scissors, if you've got some, and some glue to put our work together. So let us begin. Paper manipulation is a nice way of describing folding paper. We're going to manipulate the paper to create a sculpture. Now, the sculpture will be abstract. And by that, I mean it won't look like a particular thing. We're gonna use geometric shapes for today's work, so straight folds, so no kind of curves, or rounded or rolled pieces of paper, just simple, straight kind of folding. And you're gonna need to know the quickest way to make a square piece of paper. So I'm just gonna get my video up and show you how to do that now. Okay, so you've got your piece of A4 paper. What you're going to need to do is fold one corner across to the opposite corner like that. Okay, so what I would do is I will just pause my video here and ask you to pause the same. And if I hit pause, please pause my video and do the same, please. Okay. Welcome back. Okay, and from that, once we open up our piece of paper, we're going to have, we're gonna fold this across, sorry, and from that, we'll be able to see where our square lies. So again, just gonna fold across where that kind of diagonal fold finished and just try and make really kind of clean folds with this, okay? From that, that's gonna show us there where we need to cut. So as I unfold that, that straight line there is where we need to cut along. If you haven't got scissors, I'll show you in the next video just how to do that. With the piece that we're gonna cut off, please don't throw that away, 'cause we're gonna use that and try and kind of keep using that one piece of paper and get as many shapes out of it as we can. Okay, so just kind of trying to get them the most out of what we've got at home. Okay, so we've got one square there. Okay. Job done. What we're going to do though, instead, is we're gonna take the spare piece of paper and we're gonna fold that again. So simple idea of just folding over one corner and then where that fold comes to allows us to kind of have another square. The reason for the square is you can use the rectangular paper, but visually, it seems to kind of create quite an interest by having that sort of sense of a symmetrical shape, you know, a square being symmetrical on all four sides, rather than just two and two, like the rectangle. So again, just try and cut as many as you can. We'll be able to get another at least three or four out of this. And of course, getting smaller each time. But again, it just allows for us to have a variety of sizes to work with, which again, when we're looking at art, it's really good to have that. So I just want you to, hopefully you've got your first square at hand, and then if you could then please just pause my video as I pause mine and do the next series of squares. Okay. Welcome back. So you should now have three squares and one tiny piece of rectangular paper left. So out of that, we can get two more. We could go even smaller again, but I think the last two should sort of see us fine. So out of that one rectangular piece of A4 paper, we've now got two, four, five squares to work with. And again, and that's just one piece of paper. So you can imagine we could use three or four bits of paper or even more if we've got those resources. It would allow for us to have a lot of interesting shapes to then work with. Now, I'm just gonna show you in a second. And I'm just gonna pause my video there. And I'd like you, please, to try and get your five squares done. And then once you've got those, please unpause and we can carry on. Okay, so this is just in case you don't have any scissors at hand for any reason. So if you do the same process of folding your paper, and when you come to the cut, the only thing you need to do is that you need to keep folding this paper and almost kind of scoring it with your nail or with a, you could use an object, but as you'll see with my example here, you just need to kind of score along the edge, and that way, when you tear it, it should work, but it's not quite as clean, of course, as that. So you'll just notice that I've just kind of kept on folding it back and forth and then sort of carefully tear it. But as you see, it's not perfect. You do get a slightly kind of like sort of third edge, I guess, rather than a clean thing. But if you're careful, you kind of can get that. You'll just notice that it just is a bit trickier. So as you tear, you sometimes have to sort of just stop, as I've had to there, and you do get a bit more wastage, unfortunately, because it's just how that is. Okay, so I would like you, please, guys, now to, if you haven't already, get your rectangle into squares, and if you do, let's say two pieces of paper to start off with, it will allow you to then try your sculpture with me. Okay, so I'm gonna hit pause, and please hit pause too, and I'll see you in a few minutes. Okay. Welcome back. I'm hoping you've got some squares. So the video is gonna be a bit faster in a second or two, because I'm just gonna speed up the sort of tempo, the pace that I'm working at. And all I'm doing, and this is not for you to have to follow exactly as I'm doing it, but I'm just showing you the idea of just by manipulating paper, so just by trying out different folds, some of them work, some of them don't always work, but just really exploring what we can do with a very simple resource, and nothing more than, you know, our fine motor skills of being able to fold and to cut, if we can do that. So as you'll see as I'm working, I'm just looking at how the paper, how it reacts and how it may look to kind of create a sculptural form. I'm just gonna sort of show you the sort of finished example, which I've kind of got with me, which is, again, it's very abstract. I've just added some thread for it, but it's just an interesting kind of abstract form with not a lot of resources, okay? So, as you'll notice now, the sort of pace is a bit faster in terms of the video, just so that you can see all the variety. And all I'm doing is just folding back and forth and just trying to see how things might come together. So nothing exact, I'm not working to a plan at the moment, or in fact, at all. I'm just trying to see how it could work, okay? And as I said, very small pieces, and please, please, please, just hit pause whenever you feel the need to and begin folding. I said rather than following every fold that I do, just understand that my only kind of goal right now is to see what shapes I can make and just learn what the limitations, or how far I can kind of push and manipulate this piece of paper. So please pause as you need to and come back to me as and when. And again, please, please, please, if you feel the need to, please keep pausing, rewind if there's a shape that you think is quite interesting. The key thing is this, the key thing is, and I'm just gonna pause this video here, and just sort of remind you about kind of things as we're working. So the sculpture that we are using, the only thing I need from you is for this to be folded really neatly, okay? So for it to work, we wanna have those lovely, clean geometric folds, okay? So if we can avoid really not having any kind of too many creases, or any at all, and no sort of, kind of scrunched up pieces of paper. If you need to practise it, if you've got lots of paper, then please, please, please do, please do that. And in regards to, you know, I haven't used every single bit. So look, here's some of my kind of like, shall we say leftover pieces that I couldn't quite think of where to go. So it's not that we throw anything away, but we certainly keep things and see how and when, if they do work for us, okay? Please keep all of these pieces that we're making. And at the end, we'll put it together, okay? So although you'll see in the video, I'm kind of trying to put pieces together, I'm just considering how things might work together, okay? Okay, so let's just get back to the video. And again, as you can see, there are no, all the folds are straight diagonal lines. I haven't and I'm not trying to kind of roll or curve the paper, that's for another lesson. And again, all I'm doing is as I'm folding, I'm just sort of seeing how things could fit together, you know, and just considering the form of it. And please pause, or if you feel like it, you can watch the video through, see how it kind of evolves, and then stop and go back to it, whichever way works best for you. But what we're trying to do is just get to understand of creating a sculpture with some very limited sort of resources, but just to show that it's doable and that it shouldn't stop us from working. So, there's a bit of a glitch there in my video. Okay, and as I said, I'm just gonna let that play through for you to watch that and just consider which shapes do or don't work, and then we can look at that. So please just pause as you need to. And again, I'm just trying to make sure that that shapes could work or how they might fit together. Nothing's definite right now, but there's just a sense of which elements would work for them. The sliding paper wasn't intentioned. It was just a sort of idea of that. And then I realised that I need some more paper. And so I realised that I would perhaps make some more of those squares with that. And again, just trying to see what does, what can work. So just back and forth folds. The key thing with all of these is that they are really kind of, or try to be, shall I say, really clean, crisp folds. So I'm not kind of, I'm trying to avoid scrunching up or making any sort of unnecessary kind of creases in the paper. As you can see, I just keep just trying to see how it could work together in those folds and just looking at what it could become. And again, it's not gonna be of a person. It's not of an object, it's abstract, which we now know means something which isn't like a particular object or thing. And just trying to sort of see how it could work. And again, this one here is I've just used a sort of rectangle to see how that might work for me. Again, I've used mainly squares, just because it seems to have worked better in the past when I've tried this, but there's no harm if you're struggling with those squares, working with it with a rectangular form and seeing how they come out. And again, you know, the basics are that it's like kind of creating a paper aeroplane and seeing those same folds. It's just a case of rather than trying to make a paper aeroplane, we just wanna see how manipulating that paper could work for us. And so once you kind of have a series of these, we can begin looking at how we put it together. And again, please feel free to pause the video to make more of these. You know, I think I ended up with, as you can see, from about three or four pieces of paper, and all of these various kind of shapes and sizes objects. No two are, there's not more than one or two that are similar or the same. And this is where we need to kind of glue parts. So as we put it together, I'm sort of just trying to see which areas could fit well together. The great thing about sort of glueing it now is that it kind of reinforces some of the folds and sort of makes that sort of a stronger form. And again, just trying to see if one part works by joining to another, and if it doesn't, trying it somewhere else, and when I'm happy with it, just glueing that together, as I said. And just keep, and remember, it's a 3D form, remember, a sculpture. It's got height, width, and length. So the great thing about it is that allows you to kind of move it around and place things on top or behind. If there's an area that you're not happy with, remember, avoid throwing things away and simply try and see if you can use that area in some way to sort of, and not to be visible, but just to be part of your sculpture. And as I said, if you have bigger paper, like A3 paper at home, then this would work equally well, or even bigger if you're fortunate to have that. But some simple A4 paper. If you don't have that, could you use a newspaper? I guess so, yeah. It's obviously not as thick as standard sort of writing paper, but it certainly would work to an extent. Again, and now I'm just sort of just trying to see where things could fit together and deciding upon that. And please, please, please, I can't remind you enough, please pause this video as and when you need to, to sort of work on your sculpture. So don't try and get it done at the same time as me, as obvious this has been sped up. And equally, don't feel that you have to try and copy these folds. I really want you to explore what you can do with simply folding paper. Okay, and as you can see, it's really starting to take shape now, you know, there's some of the smaller pieces that I've, I've sort of worked with the bigger pieces to start off with, and then added the smaller pieces as and when I think that they need to be. I'm sorry that video has just jumped. Let me just move forward again. It's just gone backwards. So as I was sort of saying, unfortunately about that, just kind of making it kind of work together and sort of seeing which components kind of can work. Again, the skill is, remember, it's what's called a fine motor skill. So fine motor skills are our ability to fold paper and do kind of intricate details. So hand and eye coordination. So this is a great way to sort of improve upon that because of the sort of fine detail work that we're doing. And just before that video sort of jumped backwards there, I was just trying explain that I've sort of worked with the majority of the bigger pieces to kind of create the sort of structural form of it, and then the smaller pieces came in as the sort of finer details, I guess. You know, imagine you'd get the basics of a shape, right, in art and then the smaller finer details afterwards. And structurally, this is how this has worked. And it's really just a case of looking at which pieces could go where and where they fit. And again, just turning the sculpture around. As it develops into an actual form, it is quite tricky to get it to sort of sit still, because of course it's not a flat object anymore. You really have to look at which pieces could go where and how it will sit. And you'll find, as I've said with this finished example here, that I end up sort of hanging it, just so I can kind of look at it as a sort of sculptural form. And it kind of, it does look well. I'm gonna talk about that when we're finished, how we kind of use it, or perhaps keep it, or preserve it, shall we say? Now, there was a few pieces left over that I just didn't feel worked for me in terms of it wasn't needed. And please feel free to kind of discard, at the very end, things that you don't like, or don't feel that they work. But as I said, this could go on and become a huge project. I think if it got any bigger, I'd probably suggest that you sort of suspend it and work from it. So if you could hang it from something, maybe like a curtain rail, that'd be really good. If you could hang it from a kind of curtain rail above your window, you could keep adding to it, and it could of course live there, in terms of that could be its home. But I would say that as it becomes quite big, and as it is only paper, it will kind of get flattened if it's left sort of on a table, or you know, so we wanna kind of get that sort of structural form to it. It's just about coming to the end of my demonstration. So I hope you've enjoyed watching that and I'm just going to go back now to our presentation. So I'm guessing at this point now, in between pausing the video, you've got to the end of your sculpture, and I'm guessing we're sort of perhaps thinking that's the end of it. Far from it. I think you should now explore if you've got your camera or your camera phone, exploring photographing it and how you can project light onto it to cast shadows. So I've just began now looking at photographing it and playing around with a torch or with a light source and just seeing if we can look at the shadows that it creates. That's your, shall we say homework task? If you get to that stage. Thank you for your time tonight, everyone, and I hope to see you next lesson. Bye.

Sculpture: Paper Manipulation

Sculpture: Paper Manipulation

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UnitArt and design / 3D sculpture: developing fine motor skills

Art and design