Fifth Grade Ceramic Picasso's

This was the fifth graders last project of the year.

We studied about Picasso and looked at his variety of portraits, focusing on how he combined profiles with the front view to make a single portrait.

I had the students draw the portrait that they wanted to create first. I really stressed that there was no right and no wrong way to do this. I suggested that they try to combine a frontal portrait with a profile, but that they did not have to.

The two rule that I did have for them were:
1) must have pattern or texture (or both)
2) must be 3 dimensional (they had to use clay to build the face up somehow

I then gave them a pre-cut slab of clay. I rarely use my slab roller anymore. I bought a large cheese slicer and I use that to cut all of my slabs. It is so much easier and less time consuming than using a slab roller!

The students used their clay tools to cut out the shape that they wanted for their face. They used the extra clay that they had from cutting out the shape

of the face and built the eyes, mouth, hair, etc. I had dollar store garlic presses that they used if they wanted to add hair.

We found that the hair looked really cool, but once it was fired, the hair had a tendency to break off- I need to find a better way to do this. If there are any suggestions out there, I would love to hear them!

I had a wide variety of texture plates out for them to use, if they wanted. Some went crazy with texture, others did not.

When they were ready to go, I fired them and then they were ready to glaze.

 I showed the students how they could divide their face into different sections and glaze each section a different color- they loved this, because it meant that they could use more colors!!

Unfortunately, since this was our last project of the year, I was unable to put these on display throughout the school. The rest of my faculty did not get a chance to see these amazing ceramic pieces. That will teach me to leave my clay project until the end of the year! Poor planning on my part!

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