Can you make a face out of natural materials? We can easily find a lot of natural art materials around us. Either in your local park or green space, in your garden if you have one, or out and about on a walk. Nature Faces is a great activity to use these natural resources to make creative and unique artwork.
What to do
- Go to an outside space to find your materials. You may choose to go to your local park or green space or use your garden if you have one. It is good to go to a space where there are some trees as this is where you will find the most amount of materials to work with.
- Gather your materials – remember try not to pick anything up that is still attached to nature and therefore still living. Find materials that have naturally fallen to the ground. Ideas for materials that work well are:
- Dry leaves
- Small twigs and sticks
- Flowers or petals
- Pine cones
- Grass that has been cut recently
3. You may choose to use a large piece of paper or card to stick your materials onto or you may wish to create your faces out in nature using the floor as your background. Equally you could use the park bench as your background and leave your face for others to find as they pass.
4. If using paper you could draw out the outline of your face and then stick your materials inside the lines or you can be more abstract and begin sticking right away. Have a think about how many materials you have collected, how big is your nature face going to be? Could you work with others from your household to make it huge or are you making it super tiny to make the ants smile?
Clay Faces
You could also create nature faces using natural clay. This video shows how to make clay at home from easy to get ingredients. The video suggests using acrylic paint to colour your clay. You could leave your clay plain to make it more friendly to our environment or you could use a more natural paint…
Find a tree that has a large trunk with a bit of a flat surface. Obviously trees don’t have a smooth surface and this is okay! But try to avoid any big lumps on the tree as this will mean you need more clay!
Get a lump of your natural clay, use the warmth of your hands to make it soft and easier to mould.
Stick your clay to the tree, use your hands or a tool (if you have one, sometimes a stick can be used as a natural tool!) to carve your clay into a face. You can carve out eyes, nose and mouth or you could be more abstract and design a clay face with more eyes or more than one mouth! If you are feeling extra creative you could try to make an animal face too on the tree.
You can also add in other natural materials like leaves or small twigs. These can be used to make extra facial features and hair or jewellery for your clay creation!
Take it Further
Take a picture of your clay face and share it with your friends. Tag us on social media @woodcraftfolk #DreamBigAtHome if you share it so we can see what everyone has been up to!
If you enjoyed this activity making faces out of natural objects you could check out Get Creative with Leaves to make your own Leaf Art and carry on the creative ideas using natural materials.
