Finished Slump/Hump Mold Projects

Would you believe that we only have two more weeks in our third quarter in my district?!  Where the heck has time gone this year...with everything that has been going on in my life this year, I feel like things have been and are passing in a blur!  Either way, I finally have gotten just about all of our ceramic projects fired in from my ceramics unit in Studio Art.  I have one more firing to go, which I will do tomorrow.  Here are some of our finished slump/hump mold projects we did in Studio Art.  Students were able to choose between glazing, painting with acrylic, or using both to finish their ceramics projects.

I think this mask is my favorite!  The glaze choices were awesome and all around was an all-around excellent job!

This one came in close second...Again, the glaze job on the cards was great and it was an interesting theme choice.  The student glazed everything but the poker chips at the bottom and the money on top.  The rest was painted with acrylic.

Two masks with excellent paint jobs.  These students opted for acrylic paint instead of glaze.

An interesting take on a bowl...loved this one!

This was a very detailed bowl by a student who is very into sports...ah, one place where sports and art got along!

A bit of a creepy mask in my opinion...but interesting none the less, especially that the nose survived!

The following is the rubric I created to grade any finished ceramic project.  I did one grade for the constructed mask itself before it went into the kiln (just in case we had an unexpected explosions) and then I did a grade for the finished product, whether it was glazed, painted or both.

Extended Day Project: Plaster Masks

Last Thursday I had a small group of 8 students for my after school activity.  I recently purchased two of these Roylco Masks of the World Poster and Mold Sets.  I have TONS of plaster from the previous art teacher before me, and I haven't used any of it so here was my chance.  Each kit makes 12 different masks, and there are these nice posters that show where in the world the masks come from, as well as what they would have looked like from their appropriate culture.

I'll eventually probably use these kits in class for something, but the kids really enjoyed picking out and painting their decorative masks.  I didn't really give them any background information on the masks, aside from showing them the posters and talking about a few of the cultures they already know about (Native American, Mayans, etc.).

This one is my mask that I painted...

After I used the plaster, I got to thinking...I'm going to do a little research to see if the plaster I have can be used to make some slump/hump molds for glass/ceramics.  I bought a glass kit over the summer that has a sort of plaster in it to make a casting mold...if the plaster is the same type, I wonder if I could make a different kind of slump mold for my glass kiln using this plaster...

6th Grade Day of the Dead Masks

Finally!  I can share my 6th grader's Day of the Dead masks!  These turned out pretty great!  Some really wanted to go with a Halloween skull over a Mexican Day of the Dead design...but nevertheless, I had some really great craftsmanship on these!  I had the students fill out the rubric before I graded them, and they were pretty honest and dead on with their grades compared to my grades...which shows they understand what they were learning about and they understand when they aren't working to their potential!  Check back onto this previous post to see the rubric I used to grade these assignments...

I think next year, if I do this exact project again, I will try out using tin foil that was suggested to make the mask forms more of a skull shape...I think that's the only thing that could have made these better!