February Post

Right now I am working on the cup project but I am also working on a teapot and a vase. I am about half way through the project right now. I would like to learn how to trim from the inside of a piece so I can make my vase lighter without changing the silhouette. I am having problems not throwing away any pieces that have flaws in them. I have thrown away twelve to fifteen cups already and only kept four. I have this vision of intricate cups in my head and I know that I do not have enough time to make them. I guess that is also a problem. Throwing cups is easy. I am also about to start experimenting with incorporating glass into my pieces. It gives pottery a cool texture and a depth that cant be reached with just glaze.

The top picture is a handle for one of my cups. 

     I painted my candle cover first with yellow and blue underglaze and then with clear glaze. The blue came out darker than I expected and the clear glaze was not thick enough so it has sandy patches on it. 

     I painted my coil pot with green underglaze and then I scrubbed the green off of the highest places. After that I painted yellow glaze over it. It turned out pretty well. Some of the back of my coils are showing. I smoothed them over but they showed up again after it was fired with the glaze. I think I should have worked them out more before I fired it the first time. 

Glazing

      It is important to wash my hands and wipe any dust off of my bisque ware before glazing because if I do not my pot will have places without glaze on it. Glaze does not stick to oily finger prints for the same reason it does not stick to wax resist. When applying wax resist it is only necessary to use it on pots that are going to be dipped. When you are dipping your pot the appropriate amount of time to keep it in contact with the glaze for one second.

Coil Pot:
     My coil pot is going well. I have not been having trouble making my coils or I would have decided on a less complicated design. My coil pot is about a third of the way built. It is going to be a bit more than twice as tall and I still have to smooth out the inside so it is not just waterproof but also pretty. I also have to smooth out the outside where my scoring is showing. Since my pot is made out of circular coils they do not fit together exactly. I have been working on a way to make them look graceful while at the same time still having a functional piece. I am not sure if my piece is matching up with my original silhouette. Honestly I just drew that as a rough sketch of what I wanted to accomplish. Whether  it matches up or not I will have a piece that is the same diameter at the top as I do at the base and it will be at least seven inches tall. Basically I would not want to follow my silhouette because it would not turn out as nice as I can possibly make it. Issues have come up that I was not expecting and I have had to improvise so it is going to be slightly different but still nice.
  

Pinch Pot Part 2

     My pinch pot turned out the way I envisioned it for the most part. I like what I came up with; it is just the little details that are bothering me like a little lump or a line that is not perfectly straight. The clay responded how I wanted it to mostly. Dry clay was harder to work with so I tried to get the clay on the pot in the same period as I got it out of the clay room. If I could change it I would smooth out the bottom and make the inside a bit nicer.