What's Going on in the Classroom: Felt and Clay Finally!

What ever happened to those last two projects in the art room?! I posted about the beginning of them, but never showed you all the end. I'll tell you what happened, summer did! But better late than never! So here are the finished wet felting and clay pieces that finished up our year in high school art!

With all the wet felted pieces finished up, they were ready to sew together to create one large wall hanging that will be displayed in our classroom for future classes to see. Students had to create a wet felted piece with a design sewn on it using three different stitches, including one that went around the border.

Now for the final glazed clay pieces. These were some amazing pieces and everyone got very creative, despite the limited glaze colors available to them. Enjoy our final creations!

What's Going on in the Classroom: Last Days in the Art Room

Ah! Only a couple more weeks and there is so much to do! So we finished out practice pieces for our clay unit and they are everywhere. First step to getting them out of the room, wax the bottoms!

Seriously, there were clay pieces on every surface in the room! After they wax the bottom, students used a dipping method to glaze their pieces.

See all the glazed pieces! They're ready for the kiln. We're waiting on putting the last batch through currently. While they were glazing, they were also working on their final, larger clay pieces. Here are a couple of examples, but I will post more when they're glazed and out of the kiln!

For the last project of the year, we are doing wet felting. This is a process where wool roving is combined with hot water and soap causing the to fibers shrink, creating a piece of felt! We did this whole process outside and it was a ton of fun, with the sun shining! Now we are learning three different stitches and embroidering a border and designs on our pieces. My hope is to sew them all together to make one large wall hanging! More pictures to come as we finish!

A Peak Inside my Portfolio- Watercolor Birds

So you guessed it, if I'm doing an animal painting, it's probably for my brother! And you're right! for his birthday this year, he wanted a series of birds that he worked with in the Asia section of the zoo. If you want to see more animal paintings that I've done for my bro, you can look here, here, here or here! Check out these sketches turned into final products.

Finished Derbyan Parakeet

Completed Chinese Hwamei

Azure Winged Magpie

Golden Pheasant

What's Going On in the Classroom: Clay!

Yay for clay! During 4th quarter, my room is completely transformed into a clay studio! Okay, that's only my wishful thinking. It's still the same old room, just with lots of clay dust and lots of enthusiasm for making things with clay! Students are starting out with a pinch pot and then one other small vessel either built with slabs or coils. Here is where we're at so far:

What's Going on in the Classroom: Fun in the Darkroom!

Hey hey, it's so beautiful outside! It makes me want summer so bad! I've realized recently that I have not been updating this here blog with any images from photo class! We just finished a section where we did some very cool and fun techniques in the darkroom. The first one was painting with developer. This is where instead of putting the whole piece of photo paper in the developer and allowing all areas of it to develop at the same rate, students painted (or dripped or splattered) on the developer so that parts of the image developed at different rates or not at all! The results are really cool! The other technique we used was to sandwich two negatives in the enlarger. This is when two negatives are placed in the enlarger on top of each other cause there to be two images on the paper when it is exposed and developed. This also looks pretty cool, check it out!

What's Going on in the Classroom: Computer Graphics Project

As promised, here is the post showing off the computer graphic skills of my students! Since this is an intro course to most of the mediums we teach at higher levels, we did a very simple project, but the kids still had so much fun with it and really used their imagination. Their assignment was to draw or paint an image that they then incorporated into a digital image that the found online (royalty free of course!) They used Adobe Photoshop to complete this assignment. Their goal was to combine their drawing with the found image as inconspicuously as possible. I have to say, even the ones that weren't very inconspicuous were still pretty cool! Check out a sampling of their work: