Sculpture Time

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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 hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.
So far I mostly have the feelers going on.
This piece is being made with raku clay, and it will be raku fired (we use the Western technique of putting the red hot pottery into a barrel of combustibles, so it's fun with fire!). I'm thinking I'll use plenty of alligator rust on Cthulhu's body, to give it a scaly appearance. I hope this will be pretty epic looking when it's done. :)

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