Penguins in the Desert?

Henri Rousseau was our inspiration for these sixth grade drawings.  The students were incouraged to use thier imaginations like Rousseau to draw animals in an enviroment.  Rousseau enjoyed going the zoo and looking at pictures of animals to grasp how animals looked, but he didn't always get the landscape correct.  We completed these drawing on 18x 12 paper with color pencils.  The emphasis was on layering and blending colors and creating changes in values.

Contour line hands and color theory

With all of the snow we had this quarter, I ended up having to break their drawings into smaller shorter projects.  I really like to have thier drawing and color theory projects be larger, but we were at the mercy of the weather this quarter.  Our first venture into countour line occured with hand drawings and color scheme collages.

We then went directly into using mannequins to draw forms in space with value.  We used graphite for the shading and thier main task was finding how the values could create round forms on a flat sheet of paper.

A Very Personal Place

The eighth graders designed slab clay boxes using a basic template for building.  We started with a square box for most students, but I allowed the students who were up for the challenge to use different shapes.  We had some triangles and a few hearts.  I prompted the students to use their personal interests as an influence during thier design process.  They used additive and subtractive building techniques to add the designs in addition to underglazes.  As thier process developed, some students also used stenciling and layers of color.

Fancy Coils

How many ways can a clay coil be manipulated to design an interesting pot? The seventh grade students created coil pots and used low fire glazes to complete the pots.  Our emphasis was on design and sticking with a plan during the process. 

The Monsters Have Arrived

My sixth graders had a fun time creating clay monsters using a hollow sphere as a starting point.  Their imaginations really showed up during the process.  We used under glazes for the colors and finsihed with a clear glaze. I heard a lot of stories being formed that were adventurous feats of the mind.  It was fun to see them so excited.  I think next time, I add in a writing portion.