Wall of Shapes
installationsAll ages
Cut big, glue it down, and let the painting take all week.
Gather these before you start.
- Canvas drop sheet
- Single wall cardboard
- Cardboard scissors or a ChompSaw
- Hot glue gun
A week of drawing with scissors: a wall of cut shapes painted all week, gelli prints, paper vases and a brush taped to a metre of stick.
Introduction
Henri Matisse was in his seventies when he made the cut-outs everyone knows now. He'd had major surgery, he couldn't stand at an easel any more, and instead of stopping he picked up a pair of scissors.
He painted big sheets of paper in flat colour first, then cut straight into them with no drawing to follow, and had the shapes pinned up around his studio so he could move them about for months before anything was fixed down. He called it drawing with scissors. When he wanted to work higher than he could reach, he taped charcoal to the end of a long bamboo pole and drew from his chair. He called those years a second life.
For me, that's the interesting part of him. There isn't a pencil anywhere in this theme, and every experience hands the kids a tool that takes some of the pressure off: scissors instead of a line, a spray bottle instead of a brush, a paintbrush taped to a long stick so nobody can control it properly!
Ours took a Monday afternoon. I sat on the floor with a pair of scissors and a hot glue gun, cutting big shapes out of cardboard and sticking them straight onto a giant canvas drop sheet (cutting at that size is so satisfying!). Then the kids painted it all week, in every colour we had out.
From Smudge to You
Below you'll find the collection of creative activities we've used to bring this theme to life at Smudge. Each one is an invitation to play, experiment, and see where the materials take you. Pick and choose what excites you and adapt them to your own space.
A taste of what's inside
installationsAll ages
Cut big, glue it down, and let the painting take all week.
Gather these before you start.
6 more inside this theme
Experience 2
collage
Cut straight into colour, press it on, and hold it up to the light.
Experience 3
print-making
Roll it thin, lay the shapes on, and pull a Matisse in negative.
Experience 4
sculpture
Cover the paper, cut the shape, fill it with fresh flowers.
Experience 5
painting-drawing
The canvas drop sheet is the ground for all of it, so lay the biggest one you have flat on the floor with room to walk around it.
Cut the shapes from single wall cardboard and cut them big, bigger than feels sensible, because they need to read from across the room. Matisse worked in leaves and fronds and stars and spirals, all curves and points, so you can go straight in with the scissors and skip the drawing. They're organic shapes, so any size works!
I cut our first lot with cardboard scissors and our second lot on the ChompSaw, which is the one I'd reach for now if you want the kids cutting alongside you. It takes single wall cardboard beautifully and it can't cut fingers, so a five year old can be cutting shapes at one end of the table while you're still going at the other!
Then hot glue everything straight onto the sheet, overlapping some, leaving air around others. Ours took an afternoon.
Smudge tip. The ChompSaw comes with a little hole punch, and it's what makes the inside cuts possible. Punch a hole in the middle of the cardboard first and you can cut out from there, which is how you get the gaps in a spiral or a comb shape without cutting in from the edge.
Get it up on the wall while it's still bare. Kraft cardboard on canvas looks gorgeous in the morning light, and it means the artists who walk in are adding to something that has already begun rather than starting a blank page.
Then it's paint, and we put out everything. Blues and greens and pinks and yellows, chunky brushes, and let the drips happen! A shape painted by one child on Monday gets painted over by another on Thursday, and the colours pile up all week.
Painting upright changes the marks, and the cardboard takes colour differently from paper, so the same blue goes down flat in one place and patchy in another.
Ours stayed up for a week with different groups painting it all through, and it looked completely different by Friday (some shapes ended up covered twice over, and a few stayed almost bare!). The cutting and gluing is a grown-up afternoon, the painting is theirs.
Paint the shapes before they go down, so the wall arrives already loud.
Keep cutting all week and add new shapes as you go, so the wall grows rather than just fills in.
No drop sheet? Tape the shapes straight onto a wall or a window and it works just as well.
Spray over the top, lift the shape, and the white is your drawing.
Experience 6
sensory-play
Blue, yellow and green rice, and the same shapes small enough to scoop.
Experience 7
painting-drawing
Tape the brush to a stick, stand back, and give up all control.