what i made during my third ceramics class
i said in my second ceramics class post that i'd be back in early may with a roundup of my third class pieces and, here we are, in early may. i brought my final pieces home on monday and i am so stoked to get to finally show them off. here's what i made during my third ceramics class.
this was wheel throwing 2 with an instructor who had a reputation for being really good at getting you to level up. i mentioned a couple of months ago that in this class i learned to use the correct form, as in my prior class i was throwing left-handed on a right-handed-spinning wheel and no one noticed. my instructor this semester caught it immediately and helped me course correct, and i started throwing so much more interesting things because of it. i also pushed myself to try underglaze and glazing techniques beyond what we'd been taught in the studio since most of the education is around throwing clay. i wanted to leave this class with a lot of different kinds of pieces but all of them showing my voice, and i feel like i succeeded.
we threw a lot of bottles in this class, focusing on learning to pull higher and throw heavier. on my own, i decided to use this class to experiment with my own store-bought glazes and experiment with techniques i use when painting paper - lots of lines and grids done loosely and rigidly. there's a travel mug in there that i made on the wheel and added a slab piece to the top, i was inspired by my instructor having a cool travel cup she had made for herself.
we also learned how to make our first closed vesselss, done by coning in my cylinders and carving the lid out during the trimming process. the left one has a handle that i threw off of the lid on the wheel, which was very satisfying. i tried a glaze combo that my classmate used and had success with but unfortunately, my dips were too thick i guess and it stuck to the shelf. i plan to wet sand that down at some point, so it's no big deal. the other vessel has not been glazed because i'm saving it for my current color expressions course - we're going to use some special glaze with a special kiln cooling program, so i want to save this for that fire in case i don't have another piece ready in time.
these are a couple of bigger vases. blumagreg is two pieces thrown and stacked with slabs added for leg and tails. i underglazed it with blue, sgraffitoed the details and around the slab pieces added, and then after first fire i painted clear glaze around the slabs and used a crimson glaze from the studio on the inside. i painted the clear glaze on way too thick, which explains all the pits throughout its body, but i love how organic and ancient it looks. the blue also came out way darker than i anticipated, but it works really well given that my muse is a black cat. goth strawberry (credit to andy for the name) is a simple vase i made with a scalloped top edge, very traditional. i painted it all with black underglaze, and the glaze is painted on clear. i added dots of black gloopy glaze for the "seeds". i painted the clear glaze on this much more thinner than i did on blumagreg which is why there are fewer pits i think.
i'll probably list some of these on bugsrock.online in the next couple of weeks, so sign up to the newsletter there if you want to know first when they're available. two weeks ago i started a new hand-building class focused on color techniques, and i have learned a lot already. i can tell you that "what i made during my fourth ceramics class" post coming up in july will be even more experimental than this last semester.
xoxo jenn