Clay Self-Portraits for First Grade

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Rina Vinetz

Self-portraits are awesome. Clay is awesome. Put them together and you get a fun projects kids love and parents treasure forever.

Multi-slab cutter easily slices clay into identical tiles.

I used a multi-slab clay cutter to slice the clay into tiles. The first graders used bamboo skewers and old glue caps to draw faces on the slabs. Remind students to draw on the clay but not too deeply – don’t cut all the way through!

First graders created self-portraits using clay slabs. Allow two 40-minutes sessions plus drying time.

I let the clay dry for 12 days, then bisque fired.

Now for color!

I saw a fabulous post on no-fire glazing techniques on the Art Smudge blog. The authors used watercolor, chalk pastel, colored pencil and more to finish bisque-fired clay (note: if you work with clay, please check out this post – it is amazing!).

We used Crayola Washable Paint In Multicultural Colors for the skin, and colored pencil and construction paper crayon for other details. A few students used colored chalk for their hair (note: the chalk was messy and will have to sprayed with a fixative – I won’t use chalk next year).

After bisque firing, clay was painted with tempera, then colored with crayons and colored pencil.

We had a range of skin tones to match – the Crayola eight bottle set of skin-tone paints matched pretty well. If anyone can recommend a set of multicultural glazes/underglazes please leave a comment!

Great job first graders!

Do you use glazes or cold finishes for clay?

******Thanks for visiting! Don’t forget to please vote for 2012 Art Ed Blog of the Year, which you can do by clicking this link and voting for K-6 Art! Voting open through December 14, 2012.******

Printing with Modeling Clay

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Rina Vinetz

Would you like to try a creative printmaking project? Something inexpensive, that can be done quickly and easily with no fancy tools or equipment? Try printing with modeling clay. This brilliant lesson from the Filth Wizardry blog was a huge hit with our fourth graders.

Students created printed suns or sunflowers using modeling clay and stamp pads. Allow 2-3 40-minutes sessions.

Materials:

Modeling Clay, AKA plasticine clay (note: I got a pack of 24 sticks of modeling clay at my local dollar store)
black stamp pads
bamboo skewers
paper
colored pencils
pencil and eraser
circle template
paper to cover table

Class 1: Experiment with modeling clay stamp printing

Our fourth graders began their printmaking project by experimenting with the clay stamp printing. They made a variety of marks on the clay, pressed the clay onto a black stamp pad, and printed on a piece of copy paper.

They printed clay coils and spirals. One boy took an imprint of the sole of his shoe and printed that! Another created a clay pretzel. They created clay hearts and alphabet letters. After a few prints, they smooshed the clay and started again. It was fabulously fun.

Clean up is easy. Since modeling clay never dries out and is reusable, we just placed the stamp pads, clay balls and skewers in our table bins until next class. We used baby wipes to clean the clay (but not all the ink!) off hands after class, then used the wipes to scrub any clay that might have got on the table.

Class 2: Print a sun or sunflower

We began the session by viewing a brief video of sun art from CBS-TV Sunday Morning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgiGKlGShY4

Student used the templates to trace a circle in the center of the paper. Then the fun began!

Begin by tracing a circle template. Then use the modeling clay to create individual facial feature stamps.

The fourth graders used the modeling clay to create facial feature stamps, sun beam stamps, petal and leaf stamps.

Fourth grade sun, printed and ready to color.

After printing, they colored their prints with colored pencils.

Coloring in a sunflower print with colored pencils.

Printed sun with colored pencil

Optional finishes:

Class 3:

Paint completed print with tempera cake:

Completed prints can be painted immediately with cake tempera.

This example is printed with ink pad, colored with colored pencil, then immediately painted with tempera cake. The sheer paint looked great over the print but did not cover stray ink fingerprints. And some had A LOT of stray fingerprints.

If you want a clean look to ALL the finished artworks, you may want to have students cut out their colored work and mount to colored paper.

Have fun! Your students are guaranteed to love printing with modeling clay!

Thanks for visiting! Don’t forget to please vote for 2012 Art Ed Blog of the Year, which you can do by clicking this link and voting for K-6 Art! Voting open through December 14, 2012.

Leaf ‘Collage’ + Photography

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Rina Vinetz

Want to try a leaf collage project? Want your leaves to stay fresh and bright forever? Skip the glue/wax paper/laminator and try a camera instead!

Third graders arranged leaves into animal shapes, then photographed their art. Allow one 40-minute class for this ‘collage’ lesson.

Third graders just completed their leaf collages, inspired by the book Look What I Did with a Leaf! by Morteza E. Sohi.

In the book, M. Sohi arranged leaves on a white background to create fanciful animals, then photographed them. Click here to see more examples.

To prepare for this lesson, you need to gather a variety of leaves and flatten them. I placed the leaves between the pages of an old phone book. Plan to do this at least a couple of days in advance so the leaves will be really flat. You can also ask kids to bring in leaves from home

On the day of class, cover tables with white paper to create a backdrop and spread out the leaves.

Cover tables with white paper to create a unified backdrop for the collages.

Students arranged the leaves to resemble animals. Butterflies were very popular!

Student arranges a leaf butterfly.

We used camera-equipped iPods to photograph our artworks. Our third grade is 1:1 iPod Touch so each child was able to take photos of their own creations.

Students used camera-equipped iPods to photograph their collages.

Students then rearranged their leaves and repeated the process. Most of our third graders made 3-5 animals during the 40 minute class.

Third Grade Student Work:

Ashley’s alligator

Deer

Mouse

Fish

One of the benefits of this method is that students can re-use and share leaves. Remind your students not to crumble the leaves, and you can reuse them for multiple classes. Students can work alone, in pairs or in groups – there is no argument over who takes the work home because everyone can have a digital copy of the work.

Next class we will learn to rotate and crop our photos, and how to email them.

Display options:

Upload to Artsonia
Email the images home, or put them up on the class wiki
Create a large class poster of all the images for the art show
Students can write a paragraph about their animals, or illustrate a story.

For further inspiration, check out the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. The artist used real fallen leaves to create her illustrations.

Warm and Cool Color Fall Leaves

Posted on November 18, 2012 by Rina Vinetz

It’s fall – time for a fall leaf project! This lesson takes just two 40-minute sessions and covers:

warm and cool colors
stenciling
organic shapes
positive and negative space
symmetry

Materials:

cardstock, cut into rectangles
pencils and erasers
scissors
white construction paper
oil pastels in warm colors (red, orange, yellow) (note: compensated affiliate link)
liquid watercolors in cool colors (purple, blue, green)
kosher salt (optional)

Leaf silhouettes

Session 1:

We looked at the silhouettes of fall leaves. We talked about the variety of leaf shapes. We discussed the difference between the organic leaf shapes and geometric shapes.

Next we created our stencils: students folded their cardstock, and drew a simple 1/2 leaf on the fold (note: don’t bother with a stem in your stencil design).

About 90% of second graders were able to design and cut a simple leaf stencil independently on their first attempt. As an alternative, you could cut stencils for your students.

Once we created the stencils we noticed they were symmetric. We also defined the leaf-shaped hole as the negative space and the leaf piece as the positive space.

Students stenciled multiple leaves . Some swapped stencils with their friends. After stenciling, they added a stem line to each leaf.

Paint leaves with cool color watercolors.

Session 2:

Students painted the leaves with liquid watercolors. They loved to see the oil pastel resist the paint. After painting, they had the option of sprinkling kosher salt on their wet art before placing their art on the drying rack.

Second grade results

Fall leaves with salt added.

The project was extremely successful. The students really enjoyed the process, and reviewed a lot of art concepts.

This lesson was inspired by this post on Kids Art Market and this post on Use Your Colored Pencils.

Do you have a favorite fall leaves project?

Fun Foam Prints: Quick and Easy!

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Rina Vinetz

Love printmaking? Try making your own stamps with self-adhesive fun foam stickers. It’s quick, easy, NEAT, inexpensive and 100% successful.

Materials:

cardboard squares, 3″x3″
self-adhesive foam stickers in various shapes such as these
scissors
hole punches
water-based markers (we used Crayola)
water-based stamp pads
paper for printing (we used copy paper)

Design the stamp:

Students began by tracing their cardboard square three times on a sheet of copy paper. Then they arranged their foam pieces within the squares until they found a pleasing composition.

Students rearrange cut-up craft foam stickers until they find an arrangement they like. Don’t peel the stickers yet!

I had a random assortment of stickers on hand – letters, animals, stars, ovals….I encouraged the students to cut up/hole punch their stickers so that the stickers no longer resembled their original shapes. No letters or numbers allowed! Once they found a good arrangement, they peeled their stickers and stuck them on the cardboard squares.