And we're back.

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Yesterday was the start of the summer pottery class session. No pics yet, since I just barely got started on stuff last night. Plus there was that whole dead phone issue. It was a very interesting session though. Our teacher brought in samples of a ton of different types of surface decoration (sgraffito, mishima, and a bunch I can't remember right now) and challenged us to make some pieces incorporating some of those techniques. This session we're going to do a cone 5 firing in addition to our regular cone 10. The underglazes we have available result in brighter colors at the lower temperature, so we can show off these techniques with more vivid colors. Cool!

I had already decided to do another dragon egg, but with more interesting decoration, so this fits in just perfectly. I'm not sure what I'll do for that, exactly, so first I'm taking the opportunity with the cone 5 clay (b-mix) to make a couple of small slab-built, molded bowls or plates and try out some different techniques. I got one bowl ready to go, smoothed out and cut to size in its mold, and will work on decorating that at home for sure, once it's leather-hard. I have enough clay to do a second and possibly a third plate, so I'm hoping to do all that at home before Saturday's class.

I also rolled out a slab of raku clay that I'll be using to create an oval box kind of thing. I just have to decide how to decorate it; I might just do stamps but I could carve it or use some of the techniques we covered last night... I'm still thinking about it. But I hope to get going on that before Saturday, as well.

Finally, I'm hoping to make a bigger sculptural piece. The pieces I've done so far have all been pretty small, so I want to make something bigger, and glaze it really brightly, and stick it out in my garden. I'm currently ruminating on what exactly to make. A dinosaur is a top contender, but I'm not totally set on that yet... I'll need to get going on it soon, though, as something big will take time to assemble and dry.

Anyway it should be a pretty fun session! I'll hopefully have time for a few smaller pieces, as well (particularly if we do an obvara firing, which isn't set yet but I'm really hoping happens because it's awesome and we've only done it once), but this is all I've got definitively planned for now. We'll see how it all goes.

I did neglect to post a finished picture of the flower-petal-ish bowl from last session, so here's a bonus pic of that:
Yep, it's footballs! This was a gift for a football-obsessed friend, who really loved it. It was tons of fun to make, too. Now onward to this session's fun projects!

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