Sculptural Markmaking

Amanda led this week's lesson on making marks with clay sculpture. Each student got ball of clay and jumped right into sculpting their own forms during sketchbook time. When working with clay some students became very kinetic.

Ginger stabs he clay, according to her " I can punch the clay, to let out some anger."

To most kids sculpting with clay comes naturally and results in a very enjoyable lesson. Students could expand their understanding of concepts because of the ease of the material. It did not take a lot of instruction for students to grasp techniques like modeling, scoring, sgraffito, and impressing. I found it was also easy for students to explain their process.

Amanda also led a clear demonstration of the techniques that we used for the sculptures by having the kids work with large slabs of clay during the demonstration. Having an interactive lecture portion of te lesson really engages students and ensures that they understand the directions you give them at the time you are giving instruction.

Students experiment techniques as a group on large clay slabs.

They seemed comfortable outlining the steps they took to reach their end result. Due to review of concepts in the past students could easily identify what it meant to make a texture and what kind of shapes were inherent in each of their sculptures. It was refreshing to hear students really apply the vocabulary they picked up from previous lessons.

Ava came up to me and showed me how she made her elephant/bee creature.

This lesson integrated mark making into figurative creation by asking students to create several textures on each figure. They worked from models of animals to combine the creatures into animal hybrids. Hybriding the figures allowed students to explore several textures at once.

Garrison was able to go through and identify the forms and shapes that he made to make up his whole piece.

Amanda chose to spotlight a sculptural artist to set the theme: Giacometti.

Presenting the artist's spotlight: Giacometti.

Kiran chose to make a Giacometti-like sculpture and he showed how he used the clay tools to form an inner structure. Giocometi actually used wire to reinforce his pieces, something that was not previously reviewed. I surprised to see that Kiran thought of how to create tall thin structures by using what was around him.

Kiran shows how he made his "Gooz" figure and gives it a good punch.

The final part of the lesson corresponded to Giacometti's process of documenting work by drawing the finished sculptures. Students were very familiar with drawing from real life due to past lessons where they became familiar with drawing from life. One of the best/funniest drawings that was produced by Hynwoo who actually contexted his documentation. He drew his figure (which was a face) as a waiter that was bringing food to customers in a restaurant. The end result was hilarious!

Hynwoo documenting his sculpture.