Squishies

A squishy is a soft sculpture that takes a drawing and transforms it into an object resembling a plushie toy.

Squishies pushes students out of their comfort zone and encourages them to draw from observation (rather than tracing from a device) and draw big. For young people who have not had steady practice or interest in drawing, tracing an image from their phone or iPad is an easier and safer way to complete assignments and feel a sense of accomplishment. However, tracing does not build much technical skill and limits the scale in which students draw. Squishies entices students to move beyond these habits with a desirable final product—a squishy.

For this iteration, the project asked 4th and 5th grade students to fill an 11”x17” sheet of paper with an observational drawing done from a 2D/digital reference image. Students were given significant leeway in choosing their own image (cartoon characters, manga characters, logos, flags, etc.), which encouraged self-driven motivation and helped students push through challenging moments.

2024