Candy Cane Drawings

This is a great end of year/Christmas activity for older students. Inspired by this post at 'A Faithful Attempt', I had my grade 6 and 7 students create a tonal drawing of a candy cane using coloured pencils. This was a great project to review drawing techniques like using curved lines and implying light and shade by creating tonal variance to describe a rounded object.

Students love seeing these take form and appear to pop out from the page. Handing out some real candy canes as inspiration is also sure sweeten the deal!

Ceramic Kimonos

In order to integrate students' learning of Japanese language, we have tackled many Japanese themed art projects this year.

This sculpture project was inspired by the work of grade 8 students from Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy here at Artsonia.   These ceramic kimonos were made by grade 4 and 5 students using slab construction techniques and stand approximately 15-20cm tall.

Students designed 3 paper template pieces for their kimono, much like a dress-making pattern which were laid onto thinly rolled slabs of clay and joined and sculpted to form a free-standing sculpture. (Having said that, many kimonos had to be glued to wooden bases after firing as they were a little unstable but I think either way looks fine).

Students used gloss glazes to add colour and pattern to their kimono, using Japanese papers and photographs of traditional kimonos as inspiration.