Not-So-Grumpy Cats - Fired and Finished!

These cute sculptures started out as Grumpy Cats, but nearly everyone took off the frown because they're so much nicer this way :)

Bisque fired and painted with acrylic house paint - we love the bright colours!!


Putting on the finishing touches....

Grumpy Cat Inspired Clay Sculptures

Our last clay project was a moulded slab bowl, and before that we made a snake coil pot, so it seemed time for a good-old non-functional sculpture. So following our oh-so-successful Grumpy Cat drawings last week (thanks again to Mary and Kathy), which the kids just loved! I decided to use Grumpy Cat to inspire our clay work this week.

We started with a block of clay shaped into a bullet form (I cut 18 blocks from a 12 kg block of red raku clay). From this we squeezed in the neck of our cats about a third of the way down and reshaped the body to smooth the transition from neck to body.

We then pulled clay up from the back of the cat's head, flattening it into a more cat-like shape, and used this clay to fashion two pointed ears.

After rolling 4 spheres of clay for the eyes and cheeks (and a very small ball for the nose), we used our thumbs to push eye sockets into the head of our cat. From there it was all about using the score-and-slip joining method to secure the eye balls into the eye sockets and the join the cheeks and nose to the cat's face.

We also used wooden skewers to push a point into each eye and whisker holes. This serves to not only delineate the eye and whiskers (we'll hot glue-gun in some wire whiskers after bisque firing), but also to allow air into the quite thick clay ball of the cat's head for more even drying (although red raku clay is pretty forgiving!)

Finally we attached a tail to curl around the cat's body, and after a bit of 'brain surgery' with a thick piece of dowel (to get air into our solid block of clay!) our cats are drying out before the bisque firing. More in a couple of weeks when we finish them off!!

Grumpy Cats, and Thank You Pinterest (Again!!)

Talia (Yr 1)

Today marks the first week of our third term - and for various personal reasons I had nothing prepared!! Pinterest to the rescue!

My heartfelt thanks to Mary at MaryMaking and Kathy at Art Projects for Kids for their Grumpy Cat lessons :) I showed the kids a Youtube video of Tardar Sauce the Grumpy Cat, and we were away!

We drew our Grumpy Cats with black marker (semi-guided drawing lesson, but with lots of encouragement for them to give their cats their own personalities - we even had some happy grumpy cats!) and smudged brown and black soft pastel. Then we created a background with felt pen, taking a line for a walk over the page. Cut and glue on our cats, and the finished products are really great!

Cat Paper Sculptures (thank you Andy Warhol!)

After admiring some of Pop artist Andy Warhol's cats (see selection below) we made Cat Sculptures using slotted cardboard. Like Andy's 25 Cats named Sam, our cats are brightly coloured and each has a very unique personality!

From '25 Cats Name Same and One Blue Pussy' by Andy Warhol:

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Cats with Attitude

Jordan O (Year 3)

Bronte B (Year 3)

Ella H (Year 2)

Emily W (Year 2)

Estelle T-F (Year 3)

Fatima M (Year 2)

Kaiden S (Year 3)

Kate P (Year 4)

Madeleine M (Year 1)

Shaun H (Year 5)

Taleeha B (Year 2)

Tasman S (Year 1)

Claire B (Year 6)

Emma M (Year 2)

Lana S (Year 3)

 Taking inspiration from Christina Bretschneider’s cats, we talked about body language and expressive color before creating our Cats with Attitude, using soft pastel.