First we had to learn how to roll the clay into coils and how to join pieces together. Then we had to roll out a slab of clay and draw our design on it.
Making our tile was quite difficult - we had to make sure all the pieces were well stuck on and smooth. Our hands got really covered in clay as we used slip, watery clay, to make sure the pieces stuck. We had to use a toothbrush to roughen up the surfaces before joining them together.
Then came the painting.
The first layer of paint was white. This made the next colours that we put on stand out. We were not allowed to use too much black because we wanted them to be bright. We had to use tiny brushes to get into all the wee spaces.
Here is a step-by-step flow of Jacob's tile
What a lot of effort he put in. Look at the smiley face. This will look amazing on the finished art piece. |
Some of the Room 6 kids have been doing art extention, they made our whanau group symbols.
Drew lay our tiles out to show us what the final piece would look like
Look at the manawa symbol, amazing! The heart has been carved beautifully with white clay. Look at the awesome Koiri patterns around the outside.
We think this is going to look amazingly awesome and can't wait to see it finally finished.
By Katelyn and Abbie.