Book Review: Art Shaped by Darrell Wakelam
‘Art Shaped’ by Darrell Wakelam should be in every art teachers collection, no matter what age group they teach. And it should be recommended by tutors who run teacher training courses, that’s how good it is.
Wakelam is a freelance teaching artist who spends his time creating card constructed projects with children in schools. You can contact him through my artists database. He has glued together a lifetime of of card construction expertise into this book.
‘Art Shaped’ illustrates 50 projects that use recycled card, (this might be old cardboard box, card, tubes, or cereal packets) that make an appealing array of animals, birds, figures faces, spaceships, castles, dragons trains and more.
What Wakelam can’t do with card isn’t worth knowing. He bends, folds and manipulates card, like some sort of card ninja. Using tape, layering, and the careful placement of tiny pieces, he creates a card world that any student would want to wander around.
It’s not just the carefully photographed step-by-step images that appealed to me. It is also how each project includes an adapt & extend section, and also a section about how the project links to other areas of the curriculum. Superb.
As an art teacher, you could initially choose to follow his projects exactly but what I’m hoping, is that eventually you would learn from his method’s and create projects of your own making.
You can purchase ‘Art Shaped’ on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com #Ad
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