Tuesday, April 19th

Clay Sculpture Work 

Recently for Frances's birthday committee, her friends decided to create clay dinosaur sculptures to include in her birthday portrait setting.
Observing that a number of children showed interest in participating in this work, we decided to expand on the general idea and asked, 

If you could sculpt anything out of clay, what would you want to create?

​Remy: My duckling (her lovie)
Cate: My key (toy) or Iris (her dog)
Bea: A maze or Knox (her dog)
Saul: A truck
Cape: The Paw Patrol (starting with Ryder)
Michael: Elephant and Turtle (his lovies)
Finlay: Gormiti (characters from a show)
Wilder: Circe (his pet snake)
Hugh: Zuzu (his dog)
Frannie: Lucie (her dog)
Daniel: Vision (a superhero) or a monster truck 
Lucas: Puppy (his lovie)
Jade: A monster
Luke: Mosasaurus  

​Beginning Thursday of last week, small groups of children worked with Brigitte to make their ideas come to life in the form of three-dimensional representations using clay. 

To begin her work, Frannie seemed a bit intimidated by the idea of creating her dog, Lucie. Instead, she began working with a flat piece of clay carving details in her piece to make a pizza. 

I’m making a pizza with sauce. See, I’m making cheese. Cheddar cheese. Yummy pizza. Delicious! - Frances

With some encouragement and support from friends at the table, she then decided to attempt her dog, Lucie. 

Lucie Goosey is so cute! I have to make more fur and her nose and Lucie’s little booboo on her nose. Lucie’s got a booboo on her nose… - Frannie

Lucie, by Frances

We have primarily observed that children are inclined to work with clay in an almost two-dimensional flat form. Perhaps this is because squishing, pounding, pressing, and flattening is less challenging than rolling, pulling, coiling, wedging, and modeling clay into three-dimensional shapes. We encouraged and challenged the children to utilize their existing skill set as well as learn new techniques to "build" with clay and manipulate the material in ways that best achieve their representational goal. 

Adding Color to our Sculptures

Today, we used underglaze to give our sculptures more detail through the addition of color. Children considered which colors best suited the intention behind their work.

​For example, Wilder sought out the colors of his pet snack, Circe, to accurately represent her natural body pattern. 

​I need red and black and yellow to make Circe and her head is all black. And two dots and she has black eyes. I can’t see the tail… (referring to the photo of Circe)
*thinking* ... The tail is all black!
And then Circe’s side is actually all red. - Wilder 

When he didn't find the colors he desired for his T.rex sculpture, Hugh thought that maybe he could make his own. Recalling previous color mixing techniques that he has used in other project work he decided make his own shade of "darkish greenish" for his dinosaur.

I need a lot of yellow because it makes it really shiny, but people can’t see the shine.
It’s not so shiny. It reminds me of T.rex skin.
​It needs to make like a darkish greenish color. T.rex skin is very darkish greenish. - Hugh

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Weekly Projections