6th Grade Greek Pottery (Traditional and Modern)

While I was doing my long term substitute teaching at Amherst Middle School last spring, I wanted to tie a couple of art lessons to what the students were learning in their other courses. I had missed the Egyptian unit in Social Studies (they covered that before my time), but I was there for their study of ancient Greece. I thought they might like to learn about ancient pottery.

Look at this pot design-how cool is this?!

 I gave them a presentation on Greek pottery (a PowerPoint presentation that introduced styles such as Geometric, Red Figure, Black Figure and White Ground) and I found it helpful to give the students a double-sided graphic organizer that would help them take notes on the presentation. After my presentation, I left the following link open for the students to play around with: Greek Pot Painter from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. It's an interactive website the students can use to learn more about Greek Pottery.

This double-sided graphic organizer followed my talk
exactly and was easy for the students to fill out
as I went through the slide show.

Students then created two pot designs: one traditional Greek pottery design using traditional pot shapes and imagery and another pot design using a modern pot shape and imagery. The students had lots of fun designing both!

I then showed them how to use oil pastels and watered down tempera paint to make their own scratch boards. When the scratch boards were dry, students could choose to scratch one of their designs into the scratchboard (this is loosely based on sgraffito where potters scratch designs into colored slip). The great thing about doing this project is that the 6th graders took a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts during this time and saw actual Greek pottery on display--they thought that was so cool!

These came out so neat--definitely a keeper!

Here's our Greek Cupboard full of wonderful Greek pottery!

The pot on the right was inspired by Minoan Pottery
(I showed the students the famous Octopus pottery from that region) 

I like how this pot has multiple layers of imagery.

These pots have some unique shapes and designs inspired by nature.

The middle pot shows an alien abduction! So clever!

Some students worked very hard to create detailed imagery
depicting soldiers or mythological beings and then painstakingly
scratched their designs onto the boards. So great!

Big Mouth Gargoyles

This past week, in Medieval Art, we explored the 3D art of gargoyles and chimeras. We learned some neat facts such as the name gargoyle means "water spitter" or "water vomiter" which is quite accurate since gargoyles have a gutter where rain is funneled through and then exits their mouths (sometimes the water exits the nose or, ahem, other places). Sculptures that do not have holes for water to travel through are actually called chimera (ki-mare-ah). Gargoyles and chimeras do not have to be scary--we saw some that looked like elephants, sea turtles and even Darth Vader! This art form is a great way for children to explore clay modeling techniques while experimenting with telling a story and expressing emotion in their work.

Love the fangs and curly tail!

We used a technique where the children created a pinch pot with clay first and then flipped it on its side to create the mouth of their gargoyle. This created a large caricature mouth and immediately made their sculpture more expressive. The children then utilized the "scratch and attach" method of using slip (watered down clay) to attach their features to the gargoyles. Since these are made from air dry clay, I took them home to dry and my husband sprayed them with a metallic faux-stone paint to make them look as though they truly are gargoyles carved from stone.



Thus technique of using a pinch pot to make a gargoyle is different than my previous approach. I thought the pinch pot gargoyles were very expressive, and great for a younger group. 

And a big "Thank you" to one of my students who brought in a few gargoyles from his personal collection for us to see firsthand. Seeing gargoyles and chimeras in 3D really helped facilitate the discussion.

Big Mouth Gargoyles

Supplies Needed:

• Air dry clay (we used Crayola), about the size of a baseball
• Newspapers and a paper plate for work surface
• Little cup (for slip)
• Plastic knife
• Crayola Marker (one of the thick ones), color not important
• Toothpick
• Paint (acrylics, or faux stone spray paint), optional

Directions:

1. Knead the dough to get it more pliable. If it is too dry, dip your fingers in a bit of water. The dough shouldn't be goopy, but it shouldn't crack when you mold it either. Divide the dough in half and put one half aside for now. The ball of dough you are working with should be about the size of a golf ball or an egg. 

2. Using your thumb and pointer finger, gently squeeze the dough to create a pinch pot. The walls of the pinch pot should be thick enough to support its weight, but thin enough so that the piece dries properly (about 1/4" thick is good).

3. Place the pinch pot on its side on the paper plate. This is the mouth of your gargoyle. Feel free to gently manipulate the pinch pot so that the mouth is expressive: a smile, a grimace, a frown. 

4. From your excess clay, pinch off a bit, about the size of a large blueberry. Place it in your little cup with a couple Tablespoons of water. Stir the clay around in the water until it dissolves and makes mud. This is slip and it will help the clay pieces stick together better.

5. Use the rest of your excess clay to form the features and appendages of your gargoyle. Gargoyle parts you may need are: eye(s), ears, a nose (with crazy nostrils), horns, scales down the back, arms, legs, claws, fangs, teeth, tail, and/or wings. The list is endless! Some things to keep in mind when creating your gargoyle parts:

• Don't make any piece too thin--it will crack as it dries.
• Legs, arms, wings and tails should touch the pinch pot and/or rest up against each other for support. Parts that stick off the pinch pot too much will get damaged. Have the legs and arms fold up like your gargoyle is crouching and make the tail wrap around the body. Look at pictures of real gargoyles to see how the sculptors handled this challenge.
• All "parts" need to be attached with slip. To do this, scratch the area you'd like to attach the "part" to the pinch pot, add a dab of slip, and then press the part onto the pinch pot. This will form a nice bond between the pieces of clay. I'm not sure if there is a formal name for this technique, but I use "scratch and attach."

I have my students use the tools they have to create all of the pieces for their gargoyles. The plastic knives are helpful to some students, the toothpick is great for scoring and poking little holes such as the pupils and drawing scales or adding a furry texture to the piece. The Crayola markers are good for rollers (the outside of the marker shaft) or to create circles for eyeballs (the end of the cap). I remind my students to add all of the parts they want to during this session, and when they think they are done I remind them to take a look again and make sure they've added details in the mouth (teeth & tongue), the top of the head (horns and hair) and the back (scales and texture). They can choose what they want to add/disregard, but I want to encourage them to add detail.

6. Once the piece has all of its "parts" on it, put it aside to dry for a few days. 

7. You can leave the sculptures as they are, or paint them. Before painting, I do a once over and hot glue any bits that seem to be falling off. Acrylic paint works well on the dry clay and you could always use a limited palette such as grey, black and white and have the students create their own faux stone look. I had a 50% off coupon for Michael's craft store and wanted to try the faux stone spray paint, so I picked that up. My husband is the spray paint guy, so I had him spray the gargoyles for me.

Note: One can of stone spray paint covered eight sculptures. I think the color we chose (a metallic stone) looked more silver than anything else. I would have liked a more "plain stone" look. Also, this paint is expensive. $5.00 for 8 sculptures is probably a bit much if you were doing this with a large group, but worked with my smaller group.

Great expression--love the two teeth in front!

Cyclops with big claws on the toes. The wings are resting against
the gargoyle's haunches so they are supported.

This student was inspired by some of the animal gargoyles we looked at.
This elephant has lovely ears. It has a trunk and tusks, too
(sorry the picture is kind of blurry).

Big Mouth Critters

OK, so I've seen those clay critters on the internet where students make pinch pots and use those for the mouths of a critter frog, fish, beaver, monster, etc. They are CUTE and I knew I had to make them with my home school kids. They've been working so hard these past few weeks I wanted to treat them to some clay time!

What a cute doggie!

I showed the children examples of caricatures. We discussed why an artist would use that technique and compared real photos of people to caricature drawings of them. What a great conversation we had!

I don't have a kiln, so we used air dry clay for this project. The children seemed to have a great time making these! And I could see doing a variation of this for medieval gargoyles or for a fun nature project.

Here are some of my notes from this project:

• I started by giving each child enough clay for a pinch pot only and walked them through the technique of making a pinch pot.
• Then I gave each child another ball of clay (about the same size as the first) for their critters' features and limbs. This helped to ensure that the critters did indeed have a large mouth and the students were able to create the pinch pot--an integral part of the project.
• Air dry clay works OK. I used Crayola brand with my students, but one bucket of clay was more moist than the other. I just had the kids knead the dry dough and work in a little water to make it more pliable. I used 2 five pound buckets of Crayola air dry clay for 12 critters.
• I used a bit of the clay in some water to make slip (a slurry of clay and water used to attach clay pieces together). I demonstrated to the children how to "scratch and attach" the clay pieces such as eyeballs and legs to the pinch pot form. I gave each student a cotton swab and a toothpick for this.  Using this technique allows the pieces of air dry clay to fuse together better than just squeezing them together.
• I brought in a hot glue gun the next week to attach any pieces that may have come off during drying. Most were pretty good.
• We used acrylic craft paint to finish our critters. The colors are nice. Next time I might try finishing them with a varnish or clear coat to make them shiny.

We loved this project! Try it yourself (and send me pictures!!)!

Enjoy!

A bunny.

A turtle.

A "blood thirsty" beaver
(I'm not making this up!).

A frog and its dinner (a fly).