Upcycled art activity: newspaper edition

Upcycled art is up and coming. This form of art consists of recycling waste materials like old newspapers, plastic bottles, tin cans, etc into art.

Here's an interesting read if you're interested in the significance of upcycled art: https://www.iberdrola.com/culture/recycled-art

In one of my most recent sessions, my students made a collage out of old newspapers. Now this activity was particularly interesting for a number of reasons:

1) It included recycling waste, something that all students were able to source.

2) The conversion of waste into art was a new concept so we had a lot of questions and thoughts coming in.

After a very close poll, my students decided to make a cat. The cat won over Santa Claus by a very thin margin!

So you want to start with a plain sheet of paper. Draw the body of the cat using a pencil or a marker. Leave approximately 2 finger space on either sides of the picture.

Next, draw the cat's scarf and head.

Once you're done with drawing your picture, start sticking the old newspapers. Put glue on small portions of the paper so that it doesn't dry up quickly. Then tear the newspaper into small bits and stick it on. We chose to use the texts for the body and the colourful advertisements for the scarf.

This is how it would look once you're done sticking.

For the final detailing, draw the eyes, nose, eats and stripes on the cat. At this point, you can also add a tail to the cat.

Here's what our students made:

Check out the behind the scenes on our website!