Begin at the Beginning

 

We began the school year by making tiles.  After all, if we were going to create another mural, students should know how tiles are made, right?  So I had some of my big students haul out my nice white clay, and I demonstrated tile making – take a piece of clay, put it on a cloth, take tiles and put them around the side, roll the clay to a smooth slab the same thickness as the tiles on the sides.  Unfold a large paperclip and use that as a tool to cut the tiles – squares, rectangles, triangles, etc.  Press a shoe sole or another tile onto the wet clay tile to add a little texture.  Separate the tiles, let them dry to bone dry.  Bisque fire.  Glaze, then glaze fire.  Easy peasy.  

My advanced class also made molds for the bullnose tiles, so that we could make our own.  Thick brick of clay, put down a plastic bag, press a bullnose tile down into the brick to make the mold.  Let it dry over a month before bisque firing.  Do not glaze. 

We had a mural design, a composite of several of last year’s entries, re-drawn into a composite design by last year’s mural design winner – that way, both murals would be in the same style, so that we’d have visual continuity.  I discussed this with my students, as well as the mural location (the wall by the entrance to the auditorium, at the front of the school).  We agreed that this was a great place for the mural, and that the design was good too.

This meant we needed a few specific colors – maroon for the graduating people in the mural, orange for the center person, bright green for part of the globe so it had a topographic quality.  We used words like topographic, composite, visual continuity, visual style, so the students became conversant in these terms.  And we glazed primarily in these colors, adding a few different reds and pinks for some variety.