Ceramic Apple

I made this ceramic apple to use for a glaze demonstration with my 8th grade students. The apple is true to size, and I wanted to use it to experiment with layering subtle different colors of glaze to make it mimic the variety of colors that you can see in a real apple skin. I was really happy with how the colors turned out in this experiment.

You can also see part of my classroom desk in the photo below.

Ceramic Box inspired by Hokusai's Great Wave

This is a demo piece that I made for one of my 8th grade classes. For their assignment, they had to make a clay box using slab construction. The lid and any other designs that they put on their box had to be based on a famous piece of artwork. For my demonstration piece, I made a box that was inspired by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa".

The finished box measures 5 inches x 4 inches and is a little over 4 inches tall. The lid is layered with different levels of clay to add some dimension to the image. All of the students were encouraged to think about how they could add texture or depth to the painting that they were basing their box on, and how they could use the different glazes to try and re-create that painting.

A Pair of Foxes

Last Valentine's Day I painted this watercolor painting of two foxes for Jeff. This year, I thought it would be fun to make him a small sculpture of the two foxes from last year's painting. I first sculpted it out of clay (you can see an unpainted photo below) and then painted it with acrylic paint after firing it. I had debated about using glaze to finish the sculpture, but in the end I decided that paint would help me better reach the finished look that I had in my head, and luckily it worked out great. When it was all done, I sealed the paint with a flat spray finish by Valspar. The completed sculpture is approximately 3.5" tall.

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.