Two in a Row!
The second class of the session has come and gone. Our teacher always uses the second class to teach the newbies how to throw, so I listened hard and attempted to follow along. I managed to turn out two specimens of roundness: a bowl and a cylinder, again using half-and-half I had leftover. I'll have to break into some of my other clay leftovers at some point, I think; I'd forgotten that if you're actually successfully throwing stuff you can go through clay much more quickly than with hand-building (well, at least with my rather perfectionist standards of hand-building). So hey, maybe I can use up my vast stock of leftovers. Wouldn't that be something!
Anyway, I had actually attempted to make two cylinders, but as our teacher always says, "bowls happen". It's pretty easy to make a bowl, but keeping the sides straight and making a cylinder is much more difficult, which is why our teacher has us aim for cylinders at first. The bowl did indeed happen first, then for my second try I managed a pretty decent cylinder. Excessive pics, 'cause it happened:
I have managed to isolate two weak areas in my throwing (two *that I know of*, I hasten to add). The first is the "up" portion of centering. The very first thing one does when throwing is get the clay centered in the exact middle of the wheel, which is accomplished by pulling the wad of clay up and pushing it back down several times. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to position myself for the up part, and it just doesn't go very well. The second thing I'm having trouble with is keeping my hands steady at the end of pulling up the walls. Basically at the very end of the motion, as I'm removing my hands from the pot, I end up moving RONG somehow or other, which messes up the top of the pot.
I'm hoping that watching a bunch of YouTube videos, plus asking for a repeat demonstration from one of the teachers during the next class will help with my first issue. The second, I fear, is a matter of lots and lots of practice. I'm just gonna have to keep plugging away...
I didn't have time to trim (thin out and shape the bottom of a piece; the bottom is attached to the wheel of course and so you can't do anything with it 'til you've finished the top and let it dry enough to hold its shape) my bowl/saucer/thingy from last week, which was just as well, because when I went to check it, thinking I'd spray it with some water so I could trim it next week, I discovered it had dried out WAY too much. One of the teachers checked it with me and thought it might've been due to too much air in the bag or something. She gave me instructions for attempting to rehydrate it (stick it in a box, propped up on something, and put water in the bottom, so it can absorb moisture from the air), so it's currently mellowing out at home and will hopefully be good to go for next week.
The only other thing I accomplished during the last class was rolling out the clay for my saggar piece so it's ready to cut up and make into stuff. I'm going to work on that this week during my lunch-breaks. Last fall I tried working in my car during my lunch-breaks, and it was quite nice. I'm sure that won't work for summer, but for now it's great working with the windows down and enjoying the breeze. The saggar piece will be an egg, made via the "clay potato" method, which is just wadding up newspaper, shaping it into the rough form you want, then wrapping it in clay. You then paddle the clay (clay potato? That's a paddlin') to get it to the shape you want before adding finishing details. And finally you poke holes, so the air inside the piece expanding doesn't cause your piece to explode. That is of paramount importance. Saggar pieces need to be smooth, so this'll be about as simple as it gets; I won't add much in the way of texture or anything. It's such a simple piece it'll be easy enough to work on during the week and hopefully have it all finished before the next class, by the end of which we have to have our saggar pieces done.
As an aside, I'm choosing to do the clay potato method rather than using a balloon, which is another option for this sort of thing, because with the newspaper there's more of it and with my obvara egg I ended up with enough ash inside the egg that when you shake it you hear a rattle. So you can freak people out and say there's a dragon skeleton in there. XD Ah ha ha. I might even put a little bit of clay in the middle of the wad of newspaper to enhance the effect. Because pottery should be fun!
Today during lunch, in addition to writing this post, I ran to the dollar store for some pottery supplies. Boring stuff like sponges, trash bags, and towels, but then also:
The left two I thought had interesting potential textures (the knobbly glass might work for my raku egg, I'm thinking). The plastic serving thing on the right I thought would be a nice shape and size for a mold for a serving thingy. Dollar stores are such a great resource! ;)
Anyway, I had actually attempted to make two cylinders, but as our teacher always says, "bowls happen". It's pretty easy to make a bowl, but keeping the sides straight and making a cylinder is much more difficult, which is why our teacher has us aim for cylinders at first. The bowl did indeed happen first, then for my second try I managed a pretty decent cylinder. Excessive pics, 'cause it happened:
I have managed to isolate two weak areas in my throwing (two *that I know of*, I hasten to add). The first is the "up" portion of centering. The very first thing one does when throwing is get the clay centered in the exact middle of the wheel, which is accomplished by pulling the wad of clay up and pushing it back down several times. I'm having a really hard time figuring out how to position myself for the up part, and it just doesn't go very well. The second thing I'm having trouble with is keeping my hands steady at the end of pulling up the walls. Basically at the very end of the motion, as I'm removing my hands from the pot, I end up moving RONG somehow or other, which messes up the top of the pot.
I'm hoping that watching a bunch of YouTube videos, plus asking for a repeat demonstration from one of the teachers during the next class will help with my first issue. The second, I fear, is a matter of lots and lots of practice. I'm just gonna have to keep plugging away...
I didn't have time to trim (thin out and shape the bottom of a piece; the bottom is attached to the wheel of course and so you can't do anything with it 'til you've finished the top and let it dry enough to hold its shape) my bowl/saucer/thingy from last week, which was just as well, because when I went to check it, thinking I'd spray it with some water so I could trim it next week, I discovered it had dried out WAY too much. One of the teachers checked it with me and thought it might've been due to too much air in the bag or something. She gave me instructions for attempting to rehydrate it (stick it in a box, propped up on something, and put water in the bottom, so it can absorb moisture from the air), so it's currently mellowing out at home and will hopefully be good to go for next week.
The only other thing I accomplished during the last class was rolling out the clay for my saggar piece so it's ready to cut up and make into stuff. I'm going to work on that this week during my lunch-breaks. Last fall I tried working in my car during my lunch-breaks, and it was quite nice. I'm sure that won't work for summer, but for now it's great working with the windows down and enjoying the breeze. The saggar piece will be an egg, made via the "clay potato" method, which is just wadding up newspaper, shaping it into the rough form you want, then wrapping it in clay. You then paddle the clay (clay potato? That's a paddlin') to get it to the shape you want before adding finishing details. And finally you poke holes, so the air inside the piece expanding doesn't cause your piece to explode. That is of paramount importance. Saggar pieces need to be smooth, so this'll be about as simple as it gets; I won't add much in the way of texture or anything. It's such a simple piece it'll be easy enough to work on during the week and hopefully have it all finished before the next class, by the end of which we have to have our saggar pieces done.
As an aside, I'm choosing to do the clay potato method rather than using a balloon, which is another option for this sort of thing, because with the newspaper there's more of it and with my obvara egg I ended up with enough ash inside the egg that when you shake it you hear a rattle. So you can freak people out and say there's a dragon skeleton in there. XD Ah ha ha. I might even put a little bit of clay in the middle of the wad of newspaper to enhance the effect. Because pottery should be fun!
Today during lunch, in addition to writing this post, I ran to the dollar store for some pottery supplies. Boring stuff like sponges, trash bags, and towels, but then also:
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