STANDING OUT IN A CROWD

REALISTIC CLAY HEAD RATTLES

CERAMICS I

clay, glazes, & oxides

I always love to see all the students heads loaded onto the cart.

So many personalities, cultures, hairstyles and expressions.

So much fun.

Here is another assignment that the kids fear going in, 

but end up giggling and really enjoying themselves.

Let's take a look.

Our first colorful one was done by junior Sara Ryave.

She used all four of our oxides and stained the bisqueware first,

then put our Transparent glaze over top.

So unique and eye catching.

Junior Michelle Son brought in a picture of movie star Marilyn Monroe.

I was so impressed with how well she pulled this face off,

but it's the hair that really calls to me.

And junior Richard Montes chose his cultural background to pull from.

Love the strong facial structure and the very cool headdress.

These two highly expressive faces were done by seniors Augustine Lee & Ashley Scott.

Senior Christian Balbido & junior Jaclyn Dong both really got into this assignment,

Christian doing a portrait of his father that I felt looked very realistic.

We end with junior Lina Kim's grandmother.

I felt it was a beautiful portrait,

Lina expressed that she thought it was so-so.

These kids are always so hard on themselves,

so that when they do like something they've made I get really happy.

I love that Lina added the flowers on her grandmother's shoulder.

A very special touch.

HE KNOWS....

he's been a naughty dog.

I've seen that look many a time on my own dog's face.

This dog belongs to junior Timothy Reyes from my Ceramics I class this year.

Tim told me he had just finished his Ceramics project at home

and this is what awaited him when he got out of the shower. 

 A broken Face Rattle.

Bah....bad dog!!!!

These kids I have been blessed to work with are the best,

so responsible, so wanting to please.

I told Tim "No problem, there is always a plan B" with me.

Tim sent me this e-mail a little after 12:00 a.m.

Hi Ms. Sposa, 

It's around midnight and I've been working on my rattle. I got pretty far and decided to take a shower. With my luck, I come out to find my piece in chunks and the plastic shredded. I don't know if it dropped from the table or my dog got up to get it. This day has definitely not been a good one for me, can we work something out tomorrow? I feel really bad because I was finally able to start resembling the face of the person I chose. 

Thanks for understanding,

Tim Reyes

A CHALLENGING ASSIGNMENT

The kids freaked out when they realized I wanted them to sculpt a realistic head from clay,

and possibly use each other as models.

They wined and complained a bit,

moaned and groan and rolled their eyes a lot.

But in the end I think they actually ended up enjoying the project.

Right Vincent!!

I think junior Vincent Nguyen really liked the one his best bud 

junior Ylia Madayag did of him.

Here he is proudly showing it off.

Thanks Vincent for being such a good sport and letting me take your pix.

Senior Marjorie Balaoro did the two on the left above and here is Ylia's up closer.

I really like how Marjorie put a mask on her extra credit piece.

And check out those fabulous eyebrows and lips on Vincent!

I believe senior Avanthi Dev may have done her grandfather.

They were all required to either bring in a resource in both frontal and profile view,

or to sculpt each other.

I think it's real interesting to see how Avanthi glazed her piece 

with blood coming from eyes, nose and ear.

We all loved that senior Eunice Shim tackled a baby.

They are so much harder to work with then adults because they have so few lines in their faces

and everything must be so very smooth.

Also their proportions are different then adults.

Junior Sam Kim complained the whole way thru this assignment 

but I felt he achieved a very expressive piece (one of their requirements).

So Sam,

you pulled this off!!!

And I also believe that senior Ashley Iseri did her grandfather as well.

I felt like she really nailed him

and that hers was one of the most realistic of the bunch.

But I think my fav was this one by sophomore Olivia Krueger 

because of the way she glazed the face.

A Red Iron Oxide stained face then painting glaze on the face.

Super cool Olivia!

Faces

REALISTIC HEAD/RATTLES

CERAMICS I

clay, glazes & oxides

These heads are always so much fun.

I asked for expression and the kids delivered!

I also required that they fill the head with dried clay balls so that it becomes a rattle as well.

Most of the kids have never drawn a head before let alone sculpted one,

so this is definitely a challenge.

Before they begin I go over head formulas.

  They take notes and diagram where the features go.

I also demo/build half a head for them which really helps as well.

I also recommended pictures of faces to be brought in.

Look closely at this wonderfully expressive one by junior Sarah Wu 

and you will see that the clay is marbled thru the Transparent glaze.

I love when that happens.

Next we have these three by juniors Edward Malacon, Annie Oh and Manav Gandhi.

Most of the kids struggle with how to do hair.

We apply it on at the end.  

So it's really fun to see how each of these kids dealt with it.

For some reason women are more difficult to pull off than men.  

Of course putting on a longer hairstyle helps;

but I really feel that senior Archana Vancheswaran has managed to capture a female here on the left with that knowing expression and the full lip half smile.

And the expressive look that was captured in the piece on the right by junior Benjamin Barnett

really captures my attention because of it's innocence and soul searching eyes.

I also admire how both chose to glaze and finish their heads.

They stained with oxides,

and Ben put a bit of blue glaze in the eyes again making his piece come alive.

I wish I had photographed these next three from a better angle 

so you could have seen their expressive features better.

All of these were really wonderfully crafted.

Looks a bit like Leonard Nimoy there in the middle from Star Trek.

We have from left to right senior Aaron Chough and juniors Cathy Huang and Sarah Chang.

All three stained with Red Iron Oxide and Aaron also added black glaze on his hair and mustache.

But the class favorite was sculpted by junior Nathan Lam.

He used his grandfather as inspiration.

Sadly the top part of the head blew off in the kiln.

Thankfully some of the shards survived

 and he was able to glue several`back so I could take a pix and put on display.

Another class favorite was this one by senior Jonathan Hsu.

If any of you are following Vikings on the history channel,

this one reminds me of the scary shaman of the tribe.

Jonathan  has stained with both Red Iron Oxide and Rutile.

Love it Jonathan!

TAA TA DAH!!

REALISTIC CLAY HEAD RATTLES

CERAMICS I

clay, glazes & oxides

Here they are, 

the heads we saw last week peeking at us from the kiln shelf.

All so expressive.

The kids were scared of this assignment.

I think they surprised themselves with how well they did.

 This wonderfully perplexed soul was created by junior Efrain Quintero.

He stained him with cobalt carbonate which turns a blue/black without glaze over top.

Senior Michelle Cuatrona has sculpted this hopeful individual with the crazy piercings.

Michelle used metal right in the plastic clay for the pierced jewelry.

You might be noticing that most of these faces that I share are males.

That's because it is very difficult to sculpt a female in clay.

The reason is because when first learning to make these faces 

we have a tendency to make the features overly large 

which translates to a male face.

I feel junior Celeste Zambrano's piece on the left is leaning more towards female than male

 because of the longer blonde hair and blue eyes.  

8th grader Julia Ruiz knocked me out of the water with hers.

I love it!

Looks like a rock-a-billie character with those longer sideburns.

I also really like how expressive 8th grader Eugene Ho's face is.

He did a tremendous job with all his features.

Very believable.

And then there was senior laarnie Barcelon's,

the class favorite.

A fabulous piece in every way!

Features, expression and glazing.

SNEAK PEEK

COMING SOON

REALISTIC CLAY HEADS

And there are some doozies!

LOL

Are You Looking At Me?

REALISTIC HEAD RATTLES

CERAMICS I

clay, glaze, oxides

We saw these faces going into the kiln a couple of weeks ago, and here they are coming out of the glaze firing.

Let me show off a couple favorites.

Because senior Anne Allan is also in my drawing classes, she had a distinct advantage in this assignment.

She had the most realistic face of all. (above left) 

I really like how she aged his face by adding wrinkles and exaggerating the cheekbones and jowls.

Senior Priya Sheth (above right) probably had one of the most expressive faces.

One of Priya's signature stylings is adding metal into her clay pieces.

Here she put a nail into the eyeball to see what effect it would have.

You never know what metal will good in the kiln.

Here it melted a bit and turned black, adding to the already expressive face.

This handsome, charismatic young fellow was created by (I'm guessing) senior Minette Tsang.

She finished this piece off by staining it with cobalt carbonate and then dipping into transparent glaze. 

Another favorite was made by junior Yasmeen Pardo.

I think she was amused and inspired by my demo. when I accidentally dropped my head.

So I think she tried doing the same to hers for a very interesting looking face.

And these last two where done by senior Megan Yeu on the left and junior John Byun on the right.(below)

I have to be honest and tell you that I like to mess around with the heads when I photo them.

I thought Megan and John's faces made a great looking couple  :)

I really , really like how Megan finished her head by using our Blue Matt glaze and wiping a bit off for a mottled look.

Then she used cobalt carbonate on the lips and eyes for highlighting.

On the hair she used our turquoise glaze.

John finished his off by staining the bisqueware with rutile oxide which creates a really pleasing yellow-orange effect.

Here's Looking At You!

Just a glimpse of my Ceramics I student's Realistic Clay Heads as they are headed off to be bisque fired.

I will post them finished at a later date.

A Head's Up

My blogging has been very erratic since school has let out.

I get minimal Internet service up at the cabin, and we've been up there quite a bit lately.

Just know I have so much more to show off from this school year's kids in addition to the Senior Goodbye in late August. 

So please continue to tune in to see if there are new posts, trying my best to work around our crazy new up and down the mountain schedule.

Realistic Head Rattles - Student Work

The kids were so scared of this assignment but then did so well with it.  We started off the unit with learning the head formulas for Frontal and the Profile views.  Then I demoed a clay head and how to make the facial features.  I asked them to bring in resources to work from because that always helps, and off they went.  There are little clay balls inside each head so that if you pick it up and shake it, it rattles.

The features on the face above are especially well done.  I'm loving those full lips.  The piece was made by I believe senior Lilith Huang.

The expressive one below with the great mohawk hair style was done by senior Brendon Lim.

One of the big requirements was to make the piece expressive, and I feel both the kids above did just that.  We have senior David Lee on the left and junior Nathan Baldonado on the right.

And below here is the work of extraordinary work of junior Justyn Li.

I even took a profile view s you can see how wonderful it is.

These next two are by seniors Allen Min and Sophia Lu.  I really like how Sophia used our black glaze to finish hers off with.

These next three are quite wonderful as well.  Each is highly expressive with some great realistic features.  They were done by  seniors Helen Beak, Tim Cho and Nikki Shah.  I especially like the muscle development in Nikki's neck area.

And the three cuties below were made by juniors James Cho, Nathan Chou, and  Carol Oh.  Love the ears Carol put on her head!

And these two I saved for last, they were some of my favorites by seniors Philip Hwang above and Zachary Rank below.

Realistic Face Rattles - Student Work

It's always fun to show off my Beginning Clay kids' face rattles.  They dread the assignment because they feel  they won't be able to do a realistic face, but it's neat cuz they surprise themselves with how well their pieces turn out.  

So let me start with senior Michael Marin and one of my favorite faces this year, above.  He's put so much personality into this work, and then I really like how he finished it off with both oxides and glazes.

Above senior Kelsey Chang did an outstanding job, I think the whole face looks especially realistic.  

And then below, junior Rita Labib did this wonderful Native American, complete with braids and feathers.

This very expressive piece above was made by senior Shayna Franklin, and I love how she glazed it.  

Below, senior Tim Chai's piece fell off the shelf before it was fired and broke in several pieces.  So after it came out of the glaze fire, he salvaged as many pieces as he could and glued them back together, then mounted the piece.

Fabulous Save Tim!!!

The very talented senior student, Jaimee Chirico created the piece above, and did a great job finishing it off.

And then junior Fernando Jacinto did this very expressive fellow below, using oxides everywhere, but glaze to highlight the eyes.

Another very talent kid, sophomore Ann Munoz, crafted this wonderfully expressive head.  As it fired it began to crack which really added a lot of interest.

I loved  the cracks, Ann wasn't so sure about them.

And this last grouping belongs to seniors Shaun Pak, Lorena Morales and Alice Cho.  

Congrats to all of you for a job well done.