Pinch Pots: Final!

We are finishing up our painted pinch pot faces!  I love them and plan on doing this again next year.  Some of them, you might notice, already have the plants inside!

Last of the pastel plants

Sometimes great art takes a little longer than planned.  A few final pastel plant drawings.  Check out the detail on the last one (yes, that was done by a 5th grader!!)

Epic Art @ Epic Yoga

As my faithful readers and friends know, I show my art at an amazing local yoga studio called Epic Yoga.  This past year I displayed some mixed media drawings that were part of a series reflecting on teaching in an urban environment. In a few months, I will be replacing these works with fresh linoleum block prints based on plants/nature.  This weekend I took my sister on a tour of the neighborhood and stopped in to see the artwork and the stunning space.  Here are a few pictures of the show before it comes down.

Overheard in art elective...

Today I celebrated my birthday with my art elective class, complete with party hats and snacks.  At one point I heard one of my favorite students exclaim: "Today is the best day of my LIFE!!!!!"  It certainly made my birthday even brighter!

Art Love!

Works in Progress: Hands

 8th graders are making progress on their hands.  Right now they are looking pretty great.  The next step is to paint them.

Plant Pastels

Here are some of my students' completed pastel drawings based on close up sections of plants. During the course of this assignment, we talk about how we are taking something real (a photo of a flower) and abstracting it by taking a close look at one section.  I think they are beautiful.  The artists range in age from 5-7th grade.

Clay Creatures

Students are working on some cool clay creatures.  There are a variety of insects as well as some imaginary creatures.  Here are some of our creatures as works in progress with our picture and sketches.

Smile

This makes me happy.

And did you recognize the artwork she illustrated?

Adorable.

Zombie Hands

One section of 8th graders are working on plaster cast hands.  It's been a little bit of a struggle as we  figure out the best way to cast them and in fact many kids have decided they are making zombie hands instead of human hands!  Regardless of how lifelike they turn out, it has been great to see the kids working together to create art and solve problems.

New Work

I recently made a new artwork- a lino block print inspired by a photo of a blossoming tulip magnolia tree in the lovely Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.  Making it was so enjoyable I picked up another piece of linoleum from Utrecht!

In memoriam

One of my former students recently passed.  He was not one I was particularly close to or even taught for a very long time but I think is important to acknowledge his life and that he is not forgotten.  

Camouflage

We are in the midst of a camouflage project, do you see the hidden lightning bug above? We started by creating clay creatures.  Next we isolated 5 shapes we found in our creature (both/either organic and geometric) and 4 colors we could use to camouflage it and to create our own original "camo" patterns.  It was a little bit of a rough start but hopefully we will have some good results soon!

Step by step

The 7th grade pinch pots are turning out nicely.  They are not all finished and ready to post yet but here are some photos with a step by step showing how we arrived at our final product.

First we watched 2 youtube videos: one on how to make a pinch pot and the other on how to add features to the pot.  Then we began rolling our clay into round shapes.

Next we squeezed (pinched!) the sides of the pot to make them thinner and more even.

We smoothed out any rough edges using sponges or fingers dipped in water.

We added funny facial features.

 

And used a toothpick to carve in extra details.

 

Once they were formed we compared them to our original sketches, and were generally impressed.

 After drying overnight, we painted them using acrylic paint.

And added small details.

Lastly we celebrated our lovely creations!!

Next week, we will be using potting soil and marigold seeds to plant the "hair."  More photos as we finish.