TRICIA TOONE | artist & teacher

Raku Firing at Frenchtown School

John Fulwood of Kissimmee River Pottery came to Frenchtown School to raku fire the ceramic work of grades 5-8. Despite the rainy day, I have to admit I personally had fun spending the day outside huddled around the kiln with John, and his assistant Marion. John brought a canopy for the students to stand under, although most decided it was more important to get an up-close look at the action than to be comfy and dry.

For most of the students of Frenchtown School, this was their first experience with ceramics. From raw clay to the raku firing, it was fun to appreciate the wonder of the ceramic process with them. I hope to have John back again next year!

Thank you Frenchtown PTA and Board of Education for making it possible!

Hunterdon Art Museum Young Artists Showcase

Frenchtown Elementary School participated in the Young Artists Showcase at Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ. It was an excellent show and we will be sure to participate next year. Congratulations to the young artists from Frenchtown, Holland Township, and Delaware Township whose work was selected to be in the exhibit.

Hunterdon Art Museum is a great local resource for those who live in Hunterdon or surrounding counties. The museum also offers adult and child classes throughout the year. I'm excited to attend the Life Drawing Marathon on Saturday, March 24. 

Here's some photos from the Young Artists Showcase.

There was a good turnout, despite the snowstorm we had that day.

A visitor admires this Frenchtown student's spraypaint peice. The 7th grader had been researching this technique on his own and made many attempts after school and at home. His hard work has quite an impact.

Tim Burton in 8th Grade Art

Tim Burton will be coming up more than once this year in 8th Grade. We just compared a clip from "Nightmare Before Christmas" with "Vincent", a short animated film created by Tim Burton in 1982. Students noticed so many consistent stylistic traits. Here's a few.

• large, vacant eyes
• limited palette, if any color at all
• three dimensional spaces have the appearance of a two dimensional line drawing
• exaggerated forms (extremely round, long, or thin)
• Tiny feet, hands, noses

One student jumped out of his seat to pause the clip of "Vincent". 

"There's Jack!"

True enough, at 5:11 you can see what looks like an early version of Jack and Sally haunting little Vincent. A great example of an artist chewing on an idea over time.

 

Students are now designing an original character inspired by the style of Tim Burton. They will create the character as a sewn material soft-sculpture. I'll post images of the characters as the project progresses. Later in the year, we will revisit Tim Burton as we will attempt stop motion animation.

Group Weaving Center

I believe this is my new favorite blog. I love seeing the results of Nan's choice based art room. I would like to gradually work choice based into my art program. However, it requires becoming quite creative with space.

With some 8th grade help, we just began a group weaving center. It has just begun, but I will update the progress.

Art Shows Us Ourselves

This was our first day of school project. Each student, grades 1 through 8, "doodled" their way across their own puzzle piece.

Our emphasis was on using doodling as a form of visual brainstorming. The only rule: Black marker outside the bold lines, colored marker inside the bold lines.

I wanted the statement to set the tone for the school year, approaching art as self-exploration. The exercise also serves as a good initial assessment of students abilities and comfort with creativity. It's also fun to see the developmental progression from 1st grade to 8th, left to right.

Creature Self-Portraits

6th graders are creating symbolic self-portraits. Students are using animals to symbolize their personality traits. Their sculptures are a combination of those animals' traits.

Armatures are constructed from newspaper, masking tape, paper mache, clay, and wire. They sculpted the basic form from newspaper and tape. The wire provides the support. Clay allows for fine detail. Students realized that they need to distribute the weight so that the creature can stand. Some hid beans and rocks within the newspaper and tape to balance the weight.

After the "skeletons" are built, students will create the "skin" with paper mache. Finally, they will be painted.

Here's a teaser. There will be more images of all the sculptures as they develop.

Olivia's sculpture is a combination of a Llama, gazelle, and bird.

A New Way to Learn Color Mixing?

This turtle was carved into Balsa Foam and painted in acrylic paint by an 8th grade student who happens to be color blind. Concerned about his ability to mix color, he asked his friend to describe what colors should go into mixing the colors for his turtle.

Beginning with the dark green on the right side of the turtle, his friend gave very precise instructions on how much green, orange, red goes into each stage of the gradation. He coached him through painting the entire turtle.

In some ways his description gave better color mixing results than the color mixing on his own project. Perhaps the act of having to describe the contents of the color caused him to look "deeper" into the color.