Clay Fish

Hi Art Spotters! Have you been spotting art all around Grandville lately? I have! Last weekend we had our first Art and Chocolate Walk in downtown Grandville! Similar to Art Prize, (without the cash prize), we hung artwork from students in Grandville Schools up in the businesses located downtown. It was a huge success, and I'll be working on a blog post on that soon.

Until then, I wanted to share a fantastic clay fish project that I completed with 6th graders. Some of the pieces were in the show!

This was a project that really focused on learning how to score and slip pieces of clay together. Students learned that without properly attaching clay pieces, they would fall off during the drying process.

To make the fish bodies hollow, we started out by making two small pinch pots. Taller pinch pots made longer thinner fish, and wider pinch pots made rounder fish. We attached the two pinch pots using score and slip, and added a hole for the mouth. Then we added eyes, lips, fins, and tails. The last work day was used to add details such as gills, scales, and texture.

 Check out some of my favorites from C.P.L.C. below!

This student also made a fish, but had a bit of extra clay. He made this lizard and I just couldn't resist letting him fire it and glaze it! I think it came out so great!

Aren't they amazing!! I was so proud of my 6th graders. I also had some fantastic results at Central and Grand View. Their fish are being finished right now, so I'll post some of those when they are done!

Happy Art making!
-Miss O'Donnell

Cool Clay for Cool Days

Hi Art Spotters! I'm doing a little Blogging Catch-up today, and thought I'd take you back to chilly December when it was time for the 3rd and 4th graders to start their clay projects.  I chose snowmen for the 3rd grade classes and igloos for the 4th grade classes.  The students were SO excited to begin....and so was I!

We decided to just focus on the face and top-hat for the 3rd graders snowmen.  Students rolled out their clay using rolling pins until it was about a quarter of an inch thick.  They then laid a template onto the clay and traced around it, removing the extra clay as they went. To make the face of the snowmen, students rolled clay spheres to look like pieces of coal for the eyes and mouth.  They made a clay slab and cut out a triangle shape for the carrot nose.  I demonstrated how to use the score and slip technique to attach the eyes, nose, and mouth onto the face of the snowman.

Here's what the snowmen looked like before they were loaded into the kiln to be fired.

 Once the snowmen were fired, students glazed them using white, black, and orange glaze purchased with a grant from the Grandville Education Foundation.  The final touch was adding a festive ribbon sash across the top-hats.  The results were fantastic!

4th graders were also really successful with their igloo clay projects.  We started by creating the snowy ground for our igloos to sit on by flattening out a piece of clay like a pancake. To make the igloo, students created a pinch pot and then attached it upside-down onto the ground piece.  The front entrance of the igloo was made by cutting a long rectangle from a slab of clay and then curving it into a "U" shape and attaching it to the front of the dome.  Student carved lines into the dome and front entrance of the igloo to look like bricks of ice.  If students had time after constructing the igloo, they could use any remaining clay to make snow balls, snowmen, and penguins!

Here are some pictures of the igloos after the first firing and before the glaze firing. 

I still have to work on getting some pics of the finished igloos after the glaze firing, so stay tuned for a later post of those!

Thanks for stopping by here at The Art Spot!

-Miss O'Donnell

Falling for Clay

Although it's already almost the end of the school year, I am just now getting around to posting about our amazing Fall themed clay projects!  It feels like yesterday that the first chilly breezes were bringing in the Fall weather.  After living in sunny Phoenix for the past three years, I was looking forward to unpacking my scarves and sweaters and warming up some spiced cider!  Since it was time for 2nd and 5th graders to learn about clay building, I thought what better than pumpkins and colorful leaves to welcome in the Fall season!

2nd graders created their pumpkins by making two small pinch pots and attaching them together to make a hollow sphere. Students were already familiar with pinch pot construction from a project they made in 1st grade.  We reviewed how to attach two pieces of wet clay together by first scoring (scratching lines into both sides of clay) and slipping (adding water to the rough scored areas).  A hole was poked in the bottom of the spheres to allow for air to escape during firing.  We then made a stem by coiling the clay, and a leaf by using slab construction (flattening out the clay like a pancake) and then cutting out a leaf shape.  The pumpkins were fired and then glazed.  The glaze was purchased thanks to a grant from the Grandville Education Foundation!  As a final touch, students added a vine by curling a pipe cleaner and gluing it to the top of the pumpkin.

Here are the amazing results!

5th graders made Fall leaves using a clay slab technique.  They first rolled out their clay to about a quarter of an inch thick.  Then, they set a large plastic leaf onto their clay and traced around it.  By pressing the fake leaf into the soft clay, the veins of the leaf were imprinted onto the clay for a realistic effect. Finally they flipped over their leaves and laid them face down onto a smal wad of newspaper.  This curved the leaf and gave it a more organic appearance rather then just a flat look.

Here's a pic of the leaves in the kiln before they were fired.

Once the leaves were fired, students chose two speckled glazes for the front and edges of their leaves.  Thanks to a grant from the Grandville Education Foundation we were able to purchase beautiful Colorburst glazes that worked perfectly for the Fall leaves.

Here's how they turned out!

As you can see, both the 2nd and 5th graders had gorgeous results with their Fall clay projects.  Stay tuned to see how the 3rd and 4th graders do with their Winter themed clay projects!

Thanks again for joining me here at The Art Spot, see you next time.

-Miss O'Donnell