Throwing Practice (Part 1)

Bowl 1:

This bowl didn’t turn out how I expected it to. The good news is that it was in fact a bowl that I meant to create, so that’s a start It did however end up being a lot taller with a thinner base than I wanted it to be. The inside curve isn’t smooth, there’s a bit of a hump which I believe is called The Potter’s hump… The outside curve is more steady but it’s very straight up and down. This is a tall bowl with a narrow bottom.. I was debating on carving some stuff into the bottom half of the bowl just because it is a lot thicker at the bottom and it’s kind of a beefy bowl but I think I might just leave it see how it goes.

Mug:

Throwing the mug went really well I think. The shape of it is good and I like how it’s bellied out and has a bit of a lip to it.

The handle might be smaller than I’d like, I like to be able to wrap my hand around a mug with a couple fingers in there but there might not be enough room in this one. There’s also some texture on the handle which I’m not sure if I should entirely remove or not but at this point I am going to leave it.

This mug has again a pretty beefy bottom. I cut the foot out of it pretty aggressively but it but it’s still feels heavier than it ought to on the bottom.. The top of the handle is probably thicker than it should be to be but I think that kind of balances out with the heavier bottom. Overall fairly happy with how this one is turning out so far.

Bowl Number 2

So this ball is short and wide, exactly the opposite of the first one. I didn’t exactly have a plan of what I was intending to do when I first started it but I knew I wanted a bowl. I think this one is a good size for like cereal I think the shape oddly enough turned out really nice I think the thickness of it of the walls is good. The bottom is nice and flat, the curve is goodso this bowl is short and wide again I don’t really know what I was intending to do when I first started it but anyway wanted a bowl.

I think overall this one will be rather nice despite the goof when I was taking it off the wheel. When I cut it off I think I got it at an angle which made it look like the whole bowl was off kilter. Pretty sure it’s just the lump of clay at the bottom that will get removed though.

Another goof with this one was the rim. I used clay to tack this sucker down as I was trimming the bottom, which is standard practice? Something went weird though and the clay I used to stick it down decided it wanted to integrate itself into the bowl, so the rim is not so tidy.

Homework Set of 8 oz small cup cylinder thingies

So Nick (pottery teacher) set me to some homework, he wanted me to throw a bunch of 8 oz balls of clay into cylinders roughly the height and diameter of my index finger. The idea was to get consistency and that specific size for all of them.

Over all the sizes are okay they are all slightly too short and slightly too skinny none of them are actually the height or width of my index finger. The consistency isn’t great either. They’re all different shapes, some of them flare up at the top, some flare at the bottom… One of them actually looks a lot like a little teacup and I’m really pleased with the shape on that one. I’m not sure if I’m going to be keeping these.. so I’m going to continue working on them as if I am.

I found that 8 oz of clay is super hard to center, cone up and cone down. It feels like there’s not enough to actually move around in between my hands so it’s really hard. Possible due to the fact that I have large hands.. I don’t know!

I threw 6 in total, for the last couple my hands were getting roughed up rubbing against the bat and I started to get tired which I think means I started rushing things a little so the last two are the least like the others. The last one went the worst, it got extremely thin right near the base to the point where it was rippling a bit. I brought it back but I don’t know if that one’s actually structurally sound enough to be usable. I am quite please though that I managed to save it. I slowed the wheel down, and collared in the clay (made the whole thing skinnier thus thickening up the walls again)

In the end I decided that I should cut at least one of these suckers in half to see what was going on in there, See how thick the walls were and how consistent I managed to get them. I opted to cut open the final one I mucked up. Turns out I did save it, the walls were good and even. It’s possible that I had stressed the clay and it would’ve busted anyway though.

I accidentally left these to dry too long before trimming them, so one of them is not pictured here. I rehydrated the others before trying to finish trimming them. The one not pictured is currently rehydrating so I’ll finished it up later.

The clay was so dry the trimming tools were basically sanding off powder rather than removing strips of slightly moist clay.

I am also getting extremely frustrated with trying to tap center. It’s black magic and I either don’t understand what’s supposed to be happening or it’s just another case of my hands can’t quite do what my brain wants them too yet. I keep tapping the object further off from center or just completely losing all control :/

*Edit*

So I trimmed the last of the little cups, which apparently I have forgotten to take a picture of. Whoops. Also, it turns out I trimmed one of my little cups too vigerously. The one on the right side in the pictures above. I cut too far in on the foot. When it dried a crack appeared. When I touched it a little chunk fell in :/

So this cup has become a tester. On it I painted a swatch of a couple different glazes. One spot each of the different low fire brands (Dick Blick, Duncan, and Amaco Teachers Palette) and also swatches of the PSH Cone 6 glazes… the ones that I had actually bought to go on this clay. Hopefully they turn out!