Clay Creations

Sleeves pulled up, newspaper down, clay boards out, tools at the ready, clay cut and..... time to experiment. We began our clay unit by looking at some clay creations made by Mrs O with students in the past. This made us aware of the range of possiblities that lay ahead of us in regards to clay sculpture. It was then time for us to experiment. We were each given a lump of clay to work with. We began by moulding it in our hands to warm it up and then manipulated it in a variety of ways. We tried rolling, stretching, poking holes, squeezing, pulling and pinching the clay. We had access to a range of tools and experimented with creating patterns and texture on our clay. This was a free time to explore the properties and possiblities when working with clay.

Our next challenge was a group one - to create pinched/pulled dinosaur sculptures. We all started off with our own piece of clay which we rolled into a ball. From this ball we had to pull out a dinosaur neck. Once this was completed we passed our clay onto our neighbour (in a circle around the group). We then had to pull out the four legs and feet. Once finished we once again passed our clay on again...... and again..... and again..... adding a neck, head, scales along it's back etc. Once completed we all had a dinosaur that had features made by different people in our group.

Our final task of the day was to use our skills developed today to create a clay creature.
We began with a ball of clay and had to pinch or pull out the body parts and features (no joining of clay allowed). We ended up with a wide range of creatures - penguin, dog, snake, spider, snail, bull, bird, turtle.... We had to make sure that we used the damp sponges to keep our clay moist so that it didn't develop cracks and dry out too much as we don't want bits falling off our sculptures as they dry.