Art Foundations: Tripod Ceramic Mugs!

Art Foundations students at Nathan Hale High School had a lot of fun with this unit! Our focus was incorporating texture and design into clay, and turning that into a functional vessel. 

The texture featured on these mugs was created from a screen.

We started by rolling out slabs of clay, and cutting them to the right size. Next, we carefully rolled and pressed different textural pieces into the soft slab. That slab was then formed into a cylinder, scored and slipped together (clay's way of staying attached), and shaped the bottom of the mug into a tripod.

These were dried thoroughly, bisque fired in the kiln, glazed, and then fired one more time. 

These were finished the day before Winter Break. We celebrated with hot chocolate-served in our handmade mugs!

Cheers!

Proud of our work.

Nathan Hale 2-D Art Foundations. Still Life Value Drawings with Light Source.

These students first started with a sketchbook assignment which taught them line drawing, quality composition, and use of space, value, value gradation, and how to use a viewfinder. Then they too these new skills and did a line drawing of a still life, which included things such as a bird cage, musical instruments, a camera, hats, and a large mounted fish. Students were able to find a view of objects that interested them, and by using their viewfinder, drew a line drawing of what they saw. After that was completed, each student was taught value with conte. Conte is similar to a very compressed chalk. They created dark, medium, and light values throughout their still life with the help of spot lights. Students were able to use the gray of their paper to help them with their medium tones. Overall, students learned the critical skills needed in order to move on and advance in this art class, and others.

Nathan Hale Art Foundations: Sculpture, Ceramics, Jewelry. 3-D Initials

Students’ sources of inspiration for this project were the initials of their name. They combined the letters of their name into an interesting design. Students used their initials to create an interesting design that stands well on its own. Their challenge was to create a three-dimensional, in-the-round piece of artwork that could stand on multiple sides. To build up their design, students used tagboard and tape. After they built their structure, they paper machéd the entire surface. Paper maché is a substance traditionally made of flour, water, and glue. Newspaper is dipped into this and applied to the structure to harden and strengthen the piece. Then, they used pure color and tints to paint the surface and negative spaces. Finally, they used Sharpie to incorporate line into their creations. Our lines were drawn using a special technique called zentangles, a form of sophisticated doodling that incorporate patterns and shape repetition. Zentangling is a current trend in the art world.

Nathan Hale Photo - Andy Goldsworthy Style

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