3rd Grade Family Portraits

    

     We were inspired by the awesome portraits over at Apex Art found here.  For our lesson, we started with looking at the super realistic illustrations of Norman Rockwell.  We also looked at family portraits of some of our staff members and teachers here at Suffield Elementary.  We talked about the way photographers arrange people when they are photographing them.  We talked about balance and overlapping and we also had a few lessons in facial proportioning.  For color, we used multi-cultural markers, regular markers, and watercolor paints.

Relief Sculpture Plates with Under Glazes

     Here are some of our finished relief sculpture plates that I wrote about in-progress here.  We finished them by first painting a thin coat of white glaze on the bisqued plate, then painting under glazes for the color, and then I dipped them into a bucket of clear glaze before the final firing.  This is my spin on the Majolica technique.  The plates can be more functional (lots of kids made cookie plates for Santa) with that solid coat of clear glaze over the whole surface.  You could probably get a similar result with watered down Stroke & Coat glazes instead of using the under glazes.  I would still dip them into clear glaze before doing the final firing. The kids absolutely loved this project and I think it will probably become an annual project!

In-Progress Relief Sculpture Plates with 3rd Grade

These plates are turning out so great that I just couldn't wait until they were completely finished to post about them!  I was inspired by the awesome ceramic plate projects over at Fun Art 4 Kids, and adapted it to be more open ended.  The students were challenged to create a plate design of their choosing (lots picked Christmas themes because I told them these would be completed and ready to go home before break) that had both high and low areas.  They created two different design ideas on manila paper and chose the strongest one to sculpt.

To make the plates, I rolled slabs of clay on our slab roller and then the kids used Dixie paper dessert plates to use as a pattern to cut around.  Then they molded the cut-out circle onto their paper plate with a paper towel in between the plate and the clay.  From there I showed them how to attach clay and how to press down into it without poking all the way through.  I'm so proud of their different ideas and how well they are coming out!  I will post an update when they're finished!

 

Dot Day with First and Second Grade!

Not familiar with Dot Day?  Learn about it here. 

For our Dot Day celebration, the second and first graders worked in groups of 3 or 4 and responded to the prompt: Make an artwork with dots.  They had lots of media choices and we just spent one classtime on this.  It was a really fun and quick project!

Suffield Art is on Instagram!

     We are off and running with our new school year!  Suffield Elementary Art is now on Instagram!  You can follow us:

@suffieldart

   I will still be updating this blog from time to time with new lessons, but I will be sharing much more of our amazing art through Instagram.  Come find us!!!

Garden Markers

     In my Clay Kids group (students ranging from grades K-5) we just finished these sweet garden markers.  Each student started with a slab that I had rolled with our slab roller.  They then cut out their markers using clay tools and stencils made from manila paper.  Each student made at least 4, and a few of them were even able to get one or two more markers out of their slab.  They wrote the names of plants or herbs that their families plant, and then we decorated them mostly by using larger beads as stamps.  After we made them, I realized I didn't get any photos of the kids using the beads as stamps, but here is a photo of the type of bead we used!