clay

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Clay, Wonderful Clay!

Ask any Georgetown artist to tell you about their favorite art project, and the answer will always be…anything clay!  Here’s a peek at some of the clay projects we are working on.

  

Fifth grade knee bowls – roll a slab and form a bowl on your knee.  Who knew your knee could be a perfect bowl shape?

 

Fourth grade slab picture frames.

  

Third grade coil pots – we’ll squeeze some clay through a garlic press and add it to the top to create a bird nest!

Second grade slab houses – can’t wait to add the texture and details.

First grade pinch pots with texture.

Kindergarten texture necklaces – they can’t wait to finish these and wear them home!

Soon we’ll be adding more details to finish up these projects, and then the firing begins.

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Middle Eastern Architecture Project – 5th Grade

Fifth grade artists are wrapping up their study of the Middle Eastern culture this week.  They looked at buildings found in the Middle Eastern culture and duplicated the towers, domes, and decorative tiles in their own architectural drawings.  They created beautiful miniature drawings using ultra fine markers, colored pencils, and crayon.

The final step was tricky, and the results – beautiful!  My students created a “doorway” from a clay slab to frame their drawings.  Their clay pieces included arabesques and geometric patterns that are used as decorative elements in Middle Eastern architecture.  The clay pieces were painted with watercolors and given a coat of Modge Podge for a bit of shine.

Up close look through the door.

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Third Grade Coil Pots

My third grade artists always learn coil pot building for their clay project.  This year I switched it up a bit, and the coil pots became bird nests.  We squeezed “twigs” through garlic presses to finish the tops of our pots – this was a big hit with my third graders!

  glazing our nests

Bird Nests fresh from the kiln.

Of course, what’s a nest without a bird and some eggs?  So we created some sweet little birds from Model Magic to live in our nests.

  We colored the model magic by dabbing it with blue markers, then mixing it until we got just the right shade of blue.

Forming a bird

waiting for eyes and beak to be painted

eggs in nest – cute even without the bird!

 

 

 

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Clay Tiles

My sweet second graders are really excited to finally take their clay tiles home.  This project was part of our Middle Eastern culture study – we looked at images of the beautiful tiles found in shrines in Iran and learned about radial symmetry before creating our own tiles.

Tile Work – Iran

Glazed tiles waiting for gold wire and sparkly beads.

  All the lovely beads – ready to add to our tiles!

Finished tiles, ready to take home and hang!