the last of the clay

Today we looked at Giacometti for inspiration and, using a pipe cleaner armature, tried to create small figures in a similar style by pressing on clay. Not sure they'll survive the drying process but they looked good when freshly made!

A page from my sketchbook - being a Northern lad I penned a couple of pigeon fanciers;

even more clay!

Seem to be on a sculpting binge lately - must be something to do with the tactile nature of clay. We started with a simple thumb pot (pinch pot) and went from there.

frogs painted

After looking at images on the internet, we painted our clay frog 'sculptures' today. Glad to say that only a few pieces broke off during the drying process.

new painting

Just painted up a pic as a thankyou gift for someone who helped get a sticky problem sorted. Had to take it with flash, daylight gone.

Hope she likes it.

Acrylics, ink & collage on canvas board.

20 x 20 cm

ribbitt ribbitt

Another frog - I love the expression on this one - I wonder what he's looking at!

frogs

Following on from our 'life circle' sketches we ventured into 3D. We had a go at making frogs from simple balls and sausages of air-hardening clay. I think they've turned out quite well. I only hope they don't crack up when they dry out. We'll paint them next week (or not).

life circles

In science we are currently 'doing' life cycles. In art therefore I showed the children how easy it was to create recognisable images from circles (life 'circles'). I demonstrated how they could use the same basic template to create pictures of a wide variety of animals - see my 'here's one I did earlier' pics for the polar bear, dog, lion and elephant. I also showed them that the lion could, by the judicious use of spots, stripes etc., become virtually any big cat.

Have put together a very rough dummy copy of my 4-way story book and have decided to send it off to agents/publishers to gauge the response - wish me luck.