Day of the Dead Sugar Skulls

My 8th graders have been learning about Dia de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead (Spanish: Día de Muertos) is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico. The holiday involves family and friends gathering to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. In Mexican culture, death is viewed as a natural part of the human cycle. It is viewed not as a day of sadness, but as a day of celebration. I love the use of color and pattern in these pieces.

Pumpkins

7th grade did an amazing job on their pumpkins this year!  I love how they used what they've learned about shading with paint and color to make their pumpkins look so realistic!

Candy corn!

6th grade observed real candy corn, studying how the lights and shadows look as they lay on paper. Then used what they noticed to add shading and highlights to their larger-than-life painted candy corn art.  This is one of my favorite projects every year!

Song bird collage!

Where did the summer go?!  Our first projects of the school are well under way and they are looking fabulous!  We began the semester with painted paper collages inspired by an artist in Texas, Lisa Morales.  She creates paper painted and mixed media collages that are amazing and so beautiful.  You can check out her work here: https://www.lisamoralesmixedmedia.com/

 Painted paper collage worked well since so many students are still coming and going, schedules are still be adjusted, and other things like that.  We painted paper for a few days, using our plain white drawing paper, and also some printed pieces for a variety of textures for the feathers. If students missed one of the painted paper days, it didn't matter since I cut all of those sheets up into small squares for everyone to use.

We prepared our background for our song birds by painting with a tempera wash.  Students were amused by the history of tempera and the fact that it was once made with egg yolks!  I assured them that our version of tempera was egg free. :)  Here's a few pics of what they're creating so far.

 Painting our papers...

Dry and ready to cut...

Ready for collage!

More glazed coil pots, gnomes, and tiny houses!

Opening the kiln is like opening a Christmas gift every time during these glaze firings!  I am so proud of my students' work on their ceramic pieces.  I have to admit I was a little worried about those gnomes and houses, but they are turning out amazing!  We had a just a few casualties during the greenware and bisque firing phase, but we were able to make a lot of the repairs during the glaze firings.

All loaded up and ready to put in the display case!

Students had the option to put something in their gnomes hands or arms.  We had fish, birds on nests, nests with eggs in them, ice cream cones, flowers, and even a baby gnome!  They were so creative!

One tiny house even looked like one of HGTV's tiny homes. :)

First round of glaze firings - 6th grade coil pots!

I had planned to wait until I had more pieces ready to post, but these are so beautiful I had to post a few pics! This project has been a lengthy process, between all of the steps and so many students missing days for the flu that hit our county hard.  Now the weather has turned warm and everything outside is blooming and beautiful, just like these amazing pieces!

I know... those paper sculptures have lived in the display case for a while, but they looked so great with the pottery so I left a few. :)

In case you missed my previous post, the underglazes made our pieces look like this:

 Easter pottery anyone? 

Then we coated with a few coats of clear, which really made my students anxious! The clear gloss glaze has an aqua tint that completely covers their beautiful colors, but fires clear.  I had to reassure them over and over that it would not ruin their colors! 

These houses, along with 7th grade’s gnomes, are in the kiln firing to their beautiful splendor as I type! More pics to come! 

Glazing day!

Glaze is going on our ceramic pieces this week!  The kids are so excited. They've been begging for weeks to glaze their pottery, but I wanted to have everything done and fired first.  We are using underglazes for color, because I have a TON of them in my storage room, and then we will coat everything with clear glaze tomorrow.

I almost wished they stayed these pastel Easter colors!  Ha!

Love this rainbow design! :)