3rd Grade
Dragon Eyes using Crayola Model Magic
Zhang Sengyou is a Chinese artist that was famous during the Liang dynasty He painted in the ink. His birth and death years are unknown, but he was active in the years of 490–540 AD. He was from Wu Commandery (around present-day Suzhou, Jiangsu).
Zhang is also associated with a famous story. It is said that one day, having painted four dragons on the walls of Anle temple in Jinling, he did not mark the pupil, not by mistake but on purpose. But, another person didn't believe he did this on purpose and went ahead and painted in the eyes of two dragons, causing the "dragons to immediately flee to heaven riding on clouds with crashing thunder." It was believed that marking the eyes of the dragons opened their eyes and gave them life. This story now a part of Chinese history and is used in modern Chinese as a metaphor to describe a written work or speech that lacks only a small element which would make it perfect. So, if I ever say to you, "add the dragon eye." What I would mean is, add the final details to make it even better. |
We are going to use air dry clay called Model Magic to create our own Dragon Eyes...
We will use markers to add color to the model magic as we are creating the eye, and you can use markers at the end to add color too. Both before the Model Magic is dry, and now while it's still wet.
Your Dragon Eye will dry in the air in about a day. But, sometimes the bottom side of it doesn't get dry, so you might have to flip it over to let the other side dry too. After it's dried, you can add more details to it using markers. Be careful, things can break on it, or pop off. If this happens, you can use Elmer's white glue to glue it back on.