Handy Ninja Skills Nine Minute Ninja

Time to get my ninja on. And my clothes.

I'm going to make some bookends made of rubber gloves

and decorated in the style of famous artist Jackson Pollock.

Here's a Jackson Pollock picture now.

He fixed his canvas to the floor or wall

and, using a paintbrush, he threw lines of paint on it.

This became known as action painting.

So first, I'm going to make my canvas,

and in this case that is a cast of a rubber glove,

so I'm going to start by drawing round a bowl on this

piece of cardboard. You can use a mug, that's about the same size.

Now I'm going to cut that out.

To get my scissors in there, I'm going to make a hole first.

I'm using sticky tack underneath the card

to help push the pencil through.

It makes it easier to cut out.

Nice big bucket.

Put the cardboard on top and now here's the tricky bit.

I'm going to hang an old rubber glove through the hole.

And I'm going to attach it to the edge of this circle

with some sticky tape.

When I say "some," I mean "a lot",

because this is going to have to hold some weight.

As this is quite fiddly, you might need some help

and I recommend working around one bit at a time.

Rubber gloves tend to be powdery on the inside,

so wash them out first and it will help the tape stick.

Right, that's looking good. Now I need to mix up some plaster of Paris.

You'll need to follow the instructions on your

plaster of Paris packet

but, as a guide, it's twice as much plaster to water

and you always add the powder to the water.

Might be good to stick on an apron

because it does tend to go everywhere.

Make sure you've stirred in all of the lumps.

It's starting to thicken now.

Keep stirring until it is smooth and pourable.

And when it's at that stage,

you need to act pretty fast, cos it starts to harden.

Make sure all of it's in, and I've left a little bit of room

at the top as it expands. And flick the fingers to make sure

all the bubbles are released,

and this means you have a nice, solid, strong cast.

If you're doing this at home, you'll need to wait for it to harden,

but not me. I'm the Art Ninja.

Nice and hard.

Remove the sticky tape to release the cast from the cardboard.

There we go.

Now I need to carefully cut down the back of the glove to get my cast out.

If you're just pulling, it's likely to break it.

Hey!

Now I need to decorate it, so I need to get some action painting in.

Now I'm going to flick it just like Jackson Pollock.

Let's start with some yellow.

If you're doing this at home, you'd better put lots of paper down.

I'll try a few ninja moves.

Hai, ii-ya!

Look at that.

Now let me give you a hand at drawing hands.

So I'm going to start by drawing the wrist.

And then I'm going to draw a half circle to give me

a guide for the palm.

I'm going to use a pencil as a guide which I can rub out later.

And then also I'm going to do a couple of lines here to give me

a guide for the size of the fingers.

The largest finger is the middle finger

and they need to be smaller either side, so index and little finger.

So I'm going to start drawing the fingers in

and the middle finger is the longest.

Get smaller towards the little finger and towards the index finger.

Now to draw the thumb, extend out slightly from the palm

and then up to the base of the four fingers

and then curve it back down into the palm.

OK, I'm just going to draw up the other side of the hand here

and then at the base of the fingers just below,

I'm going to draw a line across like a crease in the hand.

Now you have the basics, practise drawing hands in different poses.

I'm going to draw a hand in profile.

Now I'm going to draw a hand pointing.

There you go. Quick art tip.

So, you can draw hands, how about making some gloves to put on them?

The Art Ninja knit-free fingerless gloves.

So I've got myself an old sticky tape loop. It's all finished.

And

ten lolly sticks,

and I'm going to lay them down just over a finger's width apart.

Great. Now I'm going to get out some sticky tape,

and take a good length,

and I'm going to lay it about a third of the way down the lolly sticks,

and just make sure all of them are stuck without sticking to the table.

There we go.

Turn it over so the sticky side is facing up,

and I'm going to roll my sticky tape loop across them.

OK, it's picked it up.

There we go.

Perfect.

So all of these now are equal distance around the

sticky tape loop, and this will become my loom.

Cool.

And I'm going to take my wool,

and just put a little bit of the length through the loop, and then

I'm going to start wrapping it round each of the lolly sticks, like this.

Wrap and loop, wrap and loop.

Now, I'm wrapping these loops around quite loose,

as I need the tension to be loose for the next step.

OK. Now the fun bit. I've got a loop round every single lolly stick,

and I'm going to do a loop round the first one I did.

And then

pull the bottom loop over the top loop

and down the other side of the lolly stick.

And this is where all the stitches and loops start to interlock.

Every time I make a new loop,

the bottom loop goes over the top of it,

tying the whole thing together.

And eventually,

it will start flowing through the middle of our tube like that.

Now, this can take a little while, so I'm going to do it at ninja speed.

Using thicker wool gets you quicker results,

as it starts to build up faster.

Nearly there now.

Right, that's looking pretty good.

You can see how it's all come together through the loom.

Even though the technique isn't traditional knitting,

the end result looks pretty convincing.

Now I need to get it off of my makeshift loom.

I can't just pull it off, because it'll drop all these stitches

and the whole thing would unravel, so I need to cast it off properly.

So I'm going to get a good length of wool...

..and cut it.

Now I'm going to post the thread

through each of my loops, so pull the loop up,

post the loose thread through it...

..pull it through like that.

And then I can just slide that entire loop off of the loom. There we go.

Now move on to the next one. Lift up the loop

and push it through.

And you can see it gradually coming off the loom

as we cast it off.

Last one.

Look at that.

Looks great!

Tie a knot in the loose ends of the wool, so they don't unravel.

There we go.

Get rid of that bit.

So now I've got one,

but I need to ninja myself another one.

There we go. Right. Might as well try them on.

When you get to the end, about there,

find a little hole in the stitch, pop your thumb through.

There we are!

Now, you don't just have to make green ones.

You can change colours to create a stripy pattern,

and you can experiment with different sized looms,

like this cake tin I've used to make this rad hat.

Now go to the website and get your ninja on.

Art Ninja!