pottery class some more
Nov. 15th, 2010 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianThis is week 7, and next week is the last bisque firing, so we're all trying to finish up trimming so things can be let dry ASAP. Of course it's raining constantly and tonight the studio is having the wet vac people come, so that's not going to be real helpful. Oh well.
Yesterday I did some trimming and threw two plates mostly-successfully; one has a weird weak place in the rim, but I hope to think up some way to make that work. (I failed at two plates. They're surprisingly hard.) Today the plates were not dry enough to trim, but that thing where I threw over a dozen pieces last Thursday kept me very busy anyway. I still haven't trimmed through the bottom of any bowls, though I've come really close and they may yet crack or give out in use due to being too thin. Tapping them and listening is surprisingly useful.
[ETA] Oh, and we're going to do a raku firing in week 10! It sounds inherently awesome since this involves getting the pots red-hot and then throwing them in a bin full of sawdust or other combustible materials so they burn in funky, unpredictable patterns. Hope I get good photos!
My test tiles are done! They were done yesterday, actually. Very cool effects on some of these glazes. It's hard to see the Darwin fishie's feet, but they're there, trust me.
I have one piece bisqued that I can find. There should be two... Normally if they break they're put on the shelf broken so you know what happened, but I can't find it at all. It might help if I remembered just what it looked like. Sometime soon I will glaze this one, but I keep not being able to find the resist wax for the bottom, and apparently asking anyone would kill me dead.
I've been wanting to make impressions, especially since seeing a guy whack a piece of brightly-colored crochet onto his pot with a ping-pong paddle a few days ago. There were so many leaves blowing around tonight, but mostly they were way too big for any piece I was going to be able to make with my minor skills. A Japanese maple leaf made its way across the Key Arena courtyard to the sidewalk, though, so I tracked its tree down and collected more. These leaves will burn off the bowl during the bisque firing, hopefully leaving cool marks made by their veins (if not the leaf blades themselves).
Lots of trimmed bowls and mugs! I have loads of love for the handleless mugs, actually. I tossed one that had collapsed on itself, but all three of the remaining ones feel lovely in my hand. One cracks me up because it has a cute little cooling-tower flare at the top but the whole thing is tweaked to the side like it's tipping over. It's stable, it just looks like a pratfall in progress. (Obligatory pessimism: clearly something horrible will befall these particular pieces, since I feel attachment, which is not the pottery way.) Not pictured are a few more bowls and the African-violet pot, which is all trimmed and artistically scratched up; the pieces fit together and everything, so clearly this one is also doomed.
Yesterday I did some trimming and threw two plates mostly-successfully; one has a weird weak place in the rim, but I hope to think up some way to make that work. (I failed at two plates. They're surprisingly hard.) Today the plates were not dry enough to trim, but that thing where I threw over a dozen pieces last Thursday kept me very busy anyway. I still haven't trimmed through the bottom of any bowls, though I've come really close and they may yet crack or give out in use due to being too thin. Tapping them and listening is surprisingly useful.
[ETA] Oh, and we're going to do a raku firing in week 10! It sounds inherently awesome since this involves getting the pots red-hot and then throwing them in a bin full of sawdust or other combustible materials so they burn in funky, unpredictable patterns. Hope I get good photos!
My test tiles are done! They were done yesterday, actually. Very cool effects on some of these glazes. It's hard to see the Darwin fishie's feet, but they're there, trust me.
I have one piece bisqued that I can find. There should be two... Normally if they break they're put on the shelf broken so you know what happened, but I can't find it at all. It might help if I remembered just what it looked like. Sometime soon I will glaze this one, but I keep not being able to find the resist wax for the bottom, and apparently asking anyone would kill me dead.
I've been wanting to make impressions, especially since seeing a guy whack a piece of brightly-colored crochet onto his pot with a ping-pong paddle a few days ago. There were so many leaves blowing around tonight, but mostly they were way too big for any piece I was going to be able to make with my minor skills. A Japanese maple leaf made its way across the Key Arena courtyard to the sidewalk, though, so I tracked its tree down and collected more. These leaves will burn off the bowl during the bisque firing, hopefully leaving cool marks made by their veins (if not the leaf blades themselves).
Lots of trimmed bowls and mugs! I have loads of love for the handleless mugs, actually. I tossed one that had collapsed on itself, but all three of the remaining ones feel lovely in my hand. One cracks me up because it has a cute little cooling-tower flare at the top but the whole thing is tweaked to the side like it's tipping over. It's stable, it just looks like a pratfall in progress. (Obligatory pessimism: clearly something horrible will befall these particular pieces, since I feel attachment, which is not the pottery way.) Not pictured are a few more bowls and the African-violet pot, which is all trimmed and artistically scratched up; the pieces fit together and everything, so clearly this one is also doomed.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 07:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 08:19 am (UTC)Raku
Date: 2010-11-16 04:58 pm (UTC)Re: Raku
Date: 2010-11-16 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 05:31 pm (UTC)Also I like the Learning Experience element of all of this.
I think my quilts have less of a 'something could go horribly wrong and it will ALL BE RUINED' element to them but certainly I have had to learn to roll with whatever happens.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 05:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'm used to rolling with things that happen in crafts to some extent, but with this I've had to learn (1) NOT to roll with it most of the time, I must bend it to my will, and (2) to just wait and see whether it will all be ruined or not.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 09:19 pm (UTC)