Phelps house tour

This year, one of the locations students are drawing is the historic Phelps house in Carthage, MO.  Tyla, a docent at the home let our students explore it's cavernous interior before we try to draw it!

Drawing field trips begin

The rain this week put us back a few days but students are stretching their newfound drawing skills on the beautiful buildings of Carthage.  First stop: Jasper County Courthouse  two blocks from school. Met a retired couple from Minnesota making their way to tulsa, that commented  "it's a beautiful day and a beautiful building to draw."  These trips also help remind me of what a wonderful place we live in.  We see friends and school busses dropping by, friendly waves from the mail carrier, even tourists from around the world lugging cameras!  Down main street we are drawing homes, and at least one owner popped out his head to tell students he was glad to see them drawing his home.

Marble paper!

Students are attempting to make marble paper for the covers of their sketchbooks.

Self portrait pre tests

This is our first assignment for the new year before we try "drawing on tje right side of the brain".  Here are some results.  These are all pre instruction, 7th and 8th grade.

Hexaflexagons 2015

Hexagons are 6 sided geometric shapes.  A hexaflexagon is a hexagon that can flex into different orientations! First discovered by Authur Stone in 1939, I discovered this for the first time at an art teacher conference at a presentation by Marilynne Bradley.  This mathmatical model is a folded paper figure that flexes, sort of like a kaleidoscope.  There are even premade templates on the internet.  Here is one based on Monsters Inc. characters.

In class, we use a compass to mark out and create 10 equilateral triangles to make the paper model.  here are some pics to explain how this happens.  

I set the compass to 6 diameter, and as long as that stays the same you should be able to swing forward and backward to mark the 3 corners of a equilateral triangle.

End of the year art showcase

It's that time of the year again  The choir concert brings in hundreds of parents, so I have all my students pick one of their artworks to go on display.  The large tigers were collaborative projects that all students helped with.  They did a great job this year!

End of the year artwork stack

This is the stack of collected artwork from spring semester.  It's all paper here and about 4 foot tall.

Textured mugs

I love textured mugs. They have so much more character than a regular, store bought mug.  I fashioned a die for our extruder from scrap lumber,  so the handles are all more uniform. 

They use slab technique and scoring and slipping.  we have roll sets that include a roll, 2 pieces of fabric, and thickness gauges.  

Students roll out a slab, apply a texture using a texture rubbing sheet, and cut out an 11x4 slab.  

This is then picked up, turned into a cylinder and the ends are scored and slipped together.

The scrap clay from this initial rolling is recycled into a smaller slab that will be used to form the base.  This is attached using S&S, and then cut out and flipped.

At this stage, students make sure there are no sharp edges, no holes, and their name and year is on the base.

they are set to the side for the next day and handles.

The handles are extruded, and usually attached on the seam from yesterday, to facilitate a stronger bond.

Once dry, they are kiln fired to bisque ware.

Glazing is fairly simple, unless the students want to accentuate their textures.  In that case, we use a subtractive method as follows.

 1. They apply 1 layer of glaze they want in the depths of the texture.  Then they take a sponge and wipe flat across the tops of the texture, removing glaze there, but keeping it in the grooves.  The top areas are glazed with a second color, and then clear glaze over it all for a second coat.

Fired again and ready for drinking!

We use a low temp white earthenware.  Cone 04.  Done right, these are functional and beautiful!