Shambling Towards Perfection

During Saturday's class I was able to finish Cthulhu. Admittedly with a bit of a rush on the legs/feet; they're not quite as nice as I would have liked but this is the last week of pottery, so I was running out of time. There'll be a raku firing on Thursday, and both my horsehair piece and Cthulhu need to be in that one, so Cthulhu had to be finished on Saturday. I actually took the piece home to baby it through the drying stage, so I'll have to take it back tomorrow night so it can get bisque fired before Thursday. The last week is always pretty insane, trying to get stuff finished at the last minute. But anyhow, Cthulhu is all done as far as sculpting goes. I realized last night that so far this summer I've made 4 pieces, each of which will be finished with different techniques. The teapot will be fired in the usual, high fire way, after being painted with underglazes and having a clear glaze applied (I'm hoping). Then the horsehair piece will be rak...

Last night I finished my flower sculpture. I think it turned out very nicely, although I had a heck of a time trying to avoid getting red clay dust on the white clay. I finally gave up trying to scrape off the dust that did get on there; I'm hoping once the sculpture has dried a bit I can just brush it off. The timing looks ok for this to make it into the soda firing, so that's exciting. Our instructor said there may be glazes to use with that, but I think I'll just leave it plain; the glaze from the soda looks spectacular even on plain clay in different colors, so that's plenty of decoration. After the flower was done, I moved on to another sculptural project. It's a sculptural dice cup in the shape of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu . I'm trying to follow this description from The Call of Cthulhu : A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hin...

Yesterday I finished my flower holder. I cleaned it up, then burnished it with the back of a metal spoon. Then I painted it with terra sigillata and burnished it with a plastic bag (apparently blue Walmart bags are the best for this, but I made do with a generic grocery bag). It now has a shiny, smooth finish, which is required for horse hair. You can kind of see the shininess in the picture; this piece looks lighter than others I've photographed because it's reflecting more light. The piece will be bisqued and then fired in a raku kiln; it won't have any glaze applied. Next I started on a small sculpture of a rose, which will hopefully be part of a soda firing that will be done during the last week of classes. Soda firing is accomplished by blowing baking soda or soda ash into a hot kiln; this results in the pieces within essentially being glazed on all their surfaces. The pieces are propped on raw clay in order to prevent their sticking to the kiln shelves. White ...

Last night was the third pottery class of the summer. I finished up my teapot by cleaning it up a bit, paring down the excess clay on the bottom, and embiggening the hole in the spout, as I was a little paranoid about how small it'd be after the clay shrinks and glaze is applied. I tried to model the shape of the spout hole after an electric kettle I have which pours magnificently. The spout hole in that kettle is slightly oval, flat across the top, and doesn't spill even a drop of water. Whether or not my teapot will pour well remains to be seen, of course... Next I started on a majigger for my grandma. It's a silk flower holder (doesn't that sound nicer than "fake flower holder"? One of the other students came up with that ;) ) and will be finished with the horse hair technique . This means I'll have to burnish the clay and paint it with terra sigillata, then it will be bisqued and later fired in the raku kiln. Then I'll put horsehair or other org...

I'm currently taking a pottery class for the fourth summer in a row (via Doña Ana Community College's Community Education Program ). I figured I might as well blog about that creative exploit, as well, because why not? It might help me get a better idea of how much I can accomplish for next time, at least, as I always have about a million projects I want to complete and not enough time to do so. So being able to prioritize and plan better would be swell. Anyhow, I'm nearly done with my first project. The first class was on Thursday and we spent an hour or an hour and a half discussing what we all wanted to accomplish. The class I'm in is for "advanced" students (aka we've all taken pottery at least once before), so we all have ideas on what we want to do. My list of things I want to make is, of course, extensive. ;) After that, our instructor encouraged us to try making a "30 Minute Teapot" which has now taken me at least 4 hours, but I can n...