Ceramic Rainforest Plaques - Toucan Example

I'm student teaching at an elementary school (1st through 5th grades) for six weeks. Next week I'll be starting my third week there. This is the project that I'm doing with my 3rd grade classes. I made this example to show them, trying to keep it as simple as possible. They're learning about the rainforest in their normal classrooms, so I thought it would be fine to tie their art project into that since they're all really interested in that subject right now.

My students are all making a rainforest animal of their choice on a clay plaque, using cookie cutters and stencils to cut out shapes and also using clay tools to cut out more free form or organic shapes. I showed them art by Charley Harper to give them examples of how you can build an animal out of shapes. We'll be using acrylic paint to add color, since I won't be there long enough to do a bisque firing and a glaze firing with the classes. The students will also be incorporating little pre-fired ceramic tiles into their animal plaques.

Judgment

I should have been doing homework, but I did this instead. It's been waaaaay too long since I had time to just play with art that wasn't related to school. I'd gotten an idea in my head after watching the recent Lost episode "Dead Is Dead" and had scribbled out some thumbnail sketches in my notebook during class in the evening. This week off from school seemed like the perfect opportunity to do some art for fun, and I had some digital painting techniques I wanted to mess around with, so Ben got to be my test subject.

This originally started out as a dark brown and white colored pencil drawing on gray Canson paper and gradually morphed into this as I started painting it in Photoshop. The textures used in this digital painting are a combination of ones I made on my own (by painting and scanning ink washes on watercolor paper) and textures from CG Textures. The final picture measures 9" x 12".

EDIT: This picture received a Daily Deviation award on deviantArt - what an exciting surprise!

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Just a sketchbook experiment with collage, acrylic paint, and matte medium.