My pottery in Bath

I'm attending a pottery course at the City of Bath College, and I have the possibility to learn, confront and try out new ceramic techniques. Here are my last pottery! I thought that could be an attractive proposition for students to design a set of 3 small pots with different shapes but with similar decorations, to work on the concept of a "triad" of objects connected by an idea that unites them.

Precious rings

Some of the girls of Year 6 are making and selling these precious bead rings, they are really beautiful! They also taught me how to make them!

Another painted guitar : Les Paul "Journey"

 

I was fascinated by painting on wood that I have experienced on the previous   body  guitar Telecaster "Red Baron" in maple. I painted another body, this time of a Gibson Les Paul in mahogany, with a subject of my own invention titled "Journey".

I know this is not a lesson to be proposed at school, but who knows if it can serve as a starting point for some creative project such as design and painting a musical instrument ... also in the classroom, why not?

Three dimensional Mirò

I thought of a way to create a three-dimensional structure with the characteristic drawings by Joan Miro, which are specifically two-dimensional. Students have copied some drawings by Miró with a black permanent marker on cardboards recycled from boxes of corn flakes. Afterwards they have painted the drawings with acrylic paint, and when the cards have dried, the students have also painted the back with the same solid colors. The funniest part was assembling the small paintings in three-dimensional structures, cutting the cardboard at the connection points and adding a little 'glue when necessary.
Check out my video tutorial!

Oriental fans with paper plates

With students of Year 6 we painted some fans in Oriental style, with colorful watercolors on the background and silhouettes of bamboo plants and branches with cherry blossoms painted in black ink. For the fans we merely used half of a paper plate!

Silhouettes of chairs for poetic evocations

PRIVATE GIG

With students of middle school (classe 3) we choose some different shapes of chairs to cut out from different sorts of paper in order to create a suggestive composition. The students tried to give an evocative title to every composition,  assembling the chairs with different backgrounds and colours.

Symmetrical masks painted

With students of Year6 we have drawn some masks with abstract but symmetrical designs. 

To make symmetrical lines we have drawn them on half face and then we have recopied them on the other half. With carbon paper we transferred the design on white cardboard.

Afterwards we have painted them with acrilyc colours, making sure that even the colours were symmetrical.

A shared experience in Omaha, Nebraska

Yesterday, I was delighted to receive a lovely email from Cynthia Vana, a Library Specialist in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She led a workshop at the Florence Branch of Omaha Public Library where the participants used white oil pastels and acrylic paint to create African patterns on brown craft paper. Her workshop, part of a February program series celebrating African American Heritage Month in the United States, was inspired by one of my lessons. You can find this lesson in a previous post called African patterns on wrapping paper. Sixteen women attended Cynthia's workshop and each of them produced a unique and beautiful piece! You can find more photos of her workshop on Omaha Public Library's Flickr page.

What gave me the most pleasure was to see such smiles on the all the students' faces -- they obviously had a lot of fun and were very satisfied with their beautiful work!

Well done Cynthia! (and Omaha Public Library!)

Small ceramic house-box

The slabs of clay can be used for lots of different projects. This  project needs precision  in measuring, cutting and assembling the slabs and the consistence of clay must be not too soft. Remember to use "slurry" clay to join the slabs on the edges, after  having scratched the surfaces to be joined.

The surface of the box may be textured, carved or decorated, and in the same way you can build a roof-lid.

Pop-up with the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World

With the pupils of Year 3 of Cherry Garden Primary School we realized these pop-up card to summarize their topic about the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. Every student realized a colorful pop-up card with his own drawing. Here are the full instructions and below are the wonderful results!