Thank you Cassie Stephens for a great project! I can see why she limited it to cats and dogs....some animal's heads did not balance well if they added a heavy snout or beak. I encouraged my students to only do a dog or cat if they were new to using clay!
Logistics was a big issue for me as I had 340 students doing clay at the same time and my kiln room is lacking shelving.
Logistics was a big issue for me as I had 340 students doing clay at the same time and my kiln room is lacking shelving.
I decided to split clay into two separate weeks for my red vs. white day students so that I would have plenty of room to store projects.
When students arrived to class on a Tuesday of clay week, I handed them a sandwhich ziplock with a white label on it. I told them to write their name on the label and set it aside. We watched the first part of the clay bobble head video on how to make the base and then I passed out the clay.
At each table, I had a water container, toothbrushes, a piece of canvas or burlap for each student to use when flattening their clay, a couple of wood sticks and a masonite paddle for each student to work on. As they were flattening their clay, I passed out the toilet paper roll. I used paper towel rolls cut into 1/3rds.
After making their base, I gave everyone a wet paper towel and showed them how to wrap it around their wet clay, bag it with the ziplock and put it into a box. After class, I wrapped each box in a plastic bag so that the projects would not be too dry to work on again on Thursday.
When students arrived to class on a Tuesday of clay week, I handed them a sandwhich ziplock with a white label on it. I told them to write their name on the label and set it aside. We watched the first part of the clay bobble head video on how to make the base and then I passed out the clay.
At each table, I had a water container, toothbrushes, a piece of canvas or burlap for each student to use when flattening their clay, a couple of wood sticks and a masonite paddle for each student to work on. As they were flattening their clay, I passed out the toilet paper roll. I used paper towel rolls cut into 1/3rds.
After making their base, I gave everyone a wet paper towel and showed them how to wrap it around their wet clay, bag it with the ziplock and put it into a box. After class, I wrapped each box in a plastic bag so that the projects would not be too dry to work on again on Thursday.
On the second day of the project (I prayed for NO snow days very hard that week!), we watched the 2nd half of the video where she makes the pinch pot head and adds the eyes and stuff. I ended up giving them the clay about halfway through the last half of the video so they would have plenty of time to add details.
While students were making the heads, I went around and pulled the cardboard tubes out of everyone's body. This gave me a chance to check thickness and make sure it would work. I found a few that were full of thick clay that I scraped out...glad I checked! Some of them had smashed the cone part down into the tube. Since the base was very important, this part needed to be right.
Students put the head in the same box with the body, carving their name into both at the end of class. This time, no plastic bags or paper towels! (I reused the plastic bags the next week, just stuck a new sticker on over the old one)
If you ever decided to do this project, DO NOT RUSH the drying time. Let those puppies sit for at least a week. Some of mine sat for 9 days, but since it was cold in my kiln room, they took forever to dry out. I had one massive load explode so I had about 20 students (5-6 from 3 classes) that had to redo their bodies.
My kiln room is not attached to my art room, in fact, it is down the hall and through two sets of doors. I can move about 4 boxes (1 class at a time) to the kiln room. Each class had to be taken to the kiln room twice, and returned to the art room twice for glazing and to take it home. I ended up making over 50 trips with my cart loaded down with clay.
I set up the glazes the same way that I had with the clay phone holders last fall. Hot colors on three tables, cool colors on three tables and neutrals at three tables. We used tons more neutrals on this project, so I was glad that I had a few bottles of brown. We used the Mayco Stroke'n'Coat glaze and I just love this stuff! 3 coats is best!
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