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Making Activities Project Four for Schools with Ceramics Facilities: Slab portraits, constructions and assemblages Suitable for Key stage 2 and up if making assemblages. Back at School Step 1. Start with life drawing. Split the pupils into pairs and get them to sit opposite each other. Get them to take it in turns drawing each other. Get them to really look at each other when doing this, rather then just drawing what they think a face looks like. For example, children almost always draw eyes too high up on a face. If you look carefully at the whole head - ie, from the chin to the top of the head, they are actually in the middle. Click on a picture below to open another window with a larger image Step 2. Make the sculpture – See Slab building and Joining clay in the working with clay section. Roll out a slab of clay. Using the drawings as a reference, get the pupils to draw a head on it. They should include a neck and shoulders. Cut the head out from the slab. At the same time, cut out a triangle of clay nearly as tall as the head, but not quite. Put this to one side. This will be stuck on the back of the head when both are leather hard so the portrait will be able to stand up. Get the pupils to add features to the slab head. They can do this using various techniques; sticking on clay noses, eyebrows etc, drawing the shape of them into the surface of the clay, painting them on using slip, or a combination of all these. If the pupils have a spare piece of clay, they can experiment with different techniques and ideas before working on the final piece. Get them to see what happens if they gently push the clay from underneath. (John Blackwell uses this technique) When the decoration is finished, put both the head and triangle of clay aside until they are leather hard. When they have reached the leather hard stage, hold the triangle at a right angle against the back of the head, and see if it will stand up properly when joined. (Note it should look a bit like the support on the back of a photo frame.) Trim the triangle if necessary. Finally, score the edge of the triangle and the back of the head, add sticking slip and join together. The head should now be free standing. Fire and glaze as appropriate. Note: If working with key stage 1 pupils, use the same techniques to make a simple mask. Work in small groups. Get the pupils to look at pictures of various masks first, and see how usually the eyes and mouths will have been cut out so the real eyes and mouths of the person wearing the mask will show through. Ask them if they can work out why this is. (If the eyes and mouths are cut out it means the person wearing the mask can be more expressive by using their own eyes and mouths to show anger, happiness etc.) If you can, bring in some masks for the pupils to try out themselves. Keep the design very simple. Get the pupils to cut out a stylised shape for the head out of a slab of clay. (Make a cardboard or wooden template for the pupils to draw around to help them with this.) Then get them to draw and cut out eyes and a mouth. Finally, get them to add some simple marks or paint for decoration. Once finished, the masks can be left to dry over a rolling pin to give a slightly curved shape.