Creative activity:
Your Animal
As winter ends, nature bursts into life. Animals wake up, move around, and get busy. What animal feels most like you at this moment? Can you bring them to life?
You might create a real animal, a pet, or even invent your own. Think about how you feel – full of energy, calm and steady, or ready to explore.
Process: Sculpting with Clay
Clay comes from the land around us and is one of the many forms of earth found beneath our feet. It is made from feldspar rock that makes up half of planet Earth’s crust, having disintegrated over millions of years. It’s a material available everywhere across the world and has been used by humans for thousands of years to make art, homes, cooking pots and tools.
Clay is a natural material dug up from the ground. It can help us connect to nature and the world around us. It’s also very fun to use!
What you'll need
- Clay (affordable airdrying clay is available in high-street shops and online)
- Simple tools found around your home like a fork, a stick, or any other tools you can model with
- Natural materials like twigs, leaves, seeds, nuts, shells, seaweed
- Found objects like wire, beads, buttons, pins, wooden chopsticks
- Pot or cup of water
- An old toothbrush or paintbrush
- A board or surface to work on, like a chopping board or plastic table cloth
Take care
- To wash your hands after collecting and handling natural materials
- To be careful when carrying and handling any sharp modelling tools
- To wash and dry your hands after working with the clay.
What you'll do
1. Bring together all of your materials.
- Take a lump of clay in your hands. Notice how it feels. Cold or warm? Soft or hard? (The clay will become easier to work with and warmer as you use it.)
3. Start to form your animal. You can make the whole sculpture from one piece of clay, or you could make separate parts and bring them together.
Top tip: If you form your animal in separate parts, you can stick the parts together by making ‘slip’, a glue made with clay and water. Do this by scrubbing water into the areas on the two pieces of clay that you’re planning to stick together using an old toothbrush or paintbrush. Hold them together for a few minutes to connect them.
4. Use the tools available to make markings and features on your animal – from the patterns on its skin and fur, to its eyes and mouth.
Top tip: If your animal is standing up on its legs but is struggling to stay upright, its body might be too heavy for its legs to hold. So, find something like an old jar or cup to prop it up while you continue creating and while it dries.
5. When you’ve finished sculpting your animal, you can use the found objects and natural materials you have collected to add more features.
6. When you have finished, spend some time looking at what you have made. What do you notice?
7. Keep your clay sculpture somewhere warm and safe to dry.
Top tip: If you want to ‘glaze’ your sculpture, which makes it more hard-wearing, you can paint it with PVA glue once it has dried.
You could also try…
If you don’t have clay, you could use other types of modelling clay like Plasticine, or make your own using flour, water and salt like this one shown by The Mint Museum.
Video guide
Watch a step-by-step video guide: