CLAY ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY – Texture, Harmony

Students create a relief panel that shows their feelings about the environment by pressing natural objects into multiple slabs of air-dry clay, arranging the tiles in a composition, and then painting the dry clay with watercolour paint.

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CLAY ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY – Texture, Harmony

Supplies:

  • Crayola Air-Dry Clay - White
  • Crayola Acrylic Paint - 6 Count
  • Crayola Paintbrushes - 5 Count
  • Crayola Washable No-Run School Glue
  • Crayola Watercolour Paint - 8 Count
  • Wood Panel or Canvas - 25.4 cm x 25.4 cm (10" x 10") - 1 per student
  • Rolling Pins
  • Water Containers
  • Paper Towels
  • Natural Objects
  • Plastic Placemats - 1 per student
 

Steps:

1
Step 1
  1. Collect natural objects from the environment such as sticks, flowers, leaves, rocks, berries and bark.
2
Step 2
  1. Paint a sturdy board or canvas with acrylic paint.
  2. Choose a colour that would be found in nature.
3
Step 3
  1. Roll out a slab of clay that will be big enough for you to cut it into 9 squares that will fit on your board.
4
Step 4
  1. Use a square of wood or cardboard as a template to cut out enough pieces to fit on your panel.
  2. Be sure the tiles will fit onto the panel without too much negative space.
5
Step 5
  1. Press a natural object into one of the soft clay squares.
  2. Roll over it with a rolling pin to make deeper textures in the clay.
6
Step 6
  1. Gently remove the natural objects from the clay.
  2. Allow the shapes to dry for 24 hours.
7
Step 7
  1. Brush black watercolour into the textures and let the paint dry.
  2. Make sure the dark colour goes into all the textures.
  3. Paint lighter colours on top allowing the dark colour to show the textures.
  4. Arrange the squares on the board in a balanced composition.
  5. Crayola No-Run School Glue to glue them in place.
  6. Cut out some meaningful words from magazines and glue them onto your clay shapes.
  7. Allow the work to dry for about 3 hours.
  • Subjects:

    • Language Arts,

    • Science,

    • Visual Arts

  • Grades:

    • Grade 7,

    • Grade 8,

    • Grade 9,

    • Grade 10


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