Dagwood Sandwiches

Are you looking for an exciting project to engage and challenge your students? I recommend these two sequential assignments that will whet your appetite and are adaptable to a variety of media and ability levels. I recently developed and taught these Dagwood Sandwich painting and ceramic sculpture lessons to my seventh- and eighth-grade art students. The results were impressive.

Inspiration from a Comic Strip
First we defined Pop Art and examined several artworks, including Claes Oldenburg’s burger sculptures and Roy Lichtenstein’s comics. Then we studied the classic comic strip Blondie, first published in the 1930s and featuring Blondie’s sandwich-loving husband, Dagwood Bumstead. The Dagwood Sandwich entered the culture as an impossibly tall, multilayered sandwich that included surprising ingredients

Sketching
Before starting their paintings, students completed two sandwich sketches, each filling the page and including a minimum of twelve ingredients. For the first sketch, they copied existing illustrations of a Dagwood Sandwich to practice drawing the shapes of the individual ingredients and layering them.

Overlapping the ingredients was challenging for some students in their initial sketches, so I gave a demonstration. I also showed how to depict the sandwich on a plate or table. The second sketch required students to engage their imaginations and sense of humor and include the ingredients of their choice—three of which had to be out of the ordinary. We discussed typical sandwich ingredients such as bread, meat/burgers, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, peppers, cucumbers, pickles, and condiments. Next, students listed ten items that would be surprising to find on a sandwich, such as an entire animal, an ice cream cone, or a slice of pizza.

Once students had completed the sketches, they posted them to an online discussion board where they exchanged positive feedback. I also provided feedback on the sketches and encouraged students to make suggested changes.

When satisfied with their sketches, students drew their sandwiches on their final paper with a pencil. They showed their final sketches to me before they began painting with acrylics. I encouraged them to mix colors and include tints to brighten up the paintings and make them cheerful. I also asked them to shade the ingredients where they overlapped and to include color gradation in the background.

Moving to Clay
I was delighted with the quality of the completed paintings, and when I mentioned the possibility of building collaborative ceramic sandwich sculptures, students responded with enthusiasm. To avoid duplicating ingredients, each student signed up to make a 6" (15 cm) ceramic ingredient. They spent a few classes building their clay ingredients, which included details and texture on all sides. Before the pieces were set out to dry, students incised their initials on the bottoms and punctured them through the center with wooden dowels. The dowel holes had to be about twice as large as the dowel itself to allow for shrinkage as the clay dries and is fired.

Sculpture Assembly
After the pieces were fired, students painted them with acrylics. (Alternatively, students could use glazes and fire the pieces a second time.) Again, I encouraged students to mix paints and include tints if appropriate. Finally, we assembled the ingredients to form the 18" (46 cm) sculptures. We ended up with about one sculpture per class of thirty students. Remarkably, there were only a few ingredients that didn’t make it through the firing process. However, several students made the dowel hole too small, and we were unable to include them in the assembled sculptures.

The paintings and sculptures were displayed in the media center at the school and received an extremely positive response from the administration, teachers, parents, and students. I wish you oodles of fun and success on your Dagwood Sandwich adventure!