When you teach, it's great fun to see students growing skills and confidence.
We started out with our student pair of handbuilders making similar vessels. As they learned techniques over the course of the weeks, I left our two hours more open. By that I mean that I gave them guidelines based on materials available that day, but they began choosing what they wanted to do with them. As neither had worked with clay in any regular way before starting with me, the challenge became more and more fun as they learned how the clay handles best and they started to test its limits.
In today's session, A. began by rolling a slab. She chose a slump mold to build a vessel, a rounded-square wooden salad bowl. She carefully laid the slab into it and trimmed off the overhanging edges.
A. rolled a second slab, made it thin, and brushed it with a warm palette of underglaze colors. This would be used as "fabric" to cut clay appliques from.
She cut shapes from the slab and applied them inside the very damp surface of the rounded-square vessel.
(The clay of the vessel will be ivory when fired.)
Then, with a thin layer of plastic over the vessel, A. was able to impress the clay into the surface without marring the layer of underglaze colors on the inlay.
D. began by rolling a big slab and fitting it over a plaster hump, aka hump mold. She made a large, open bowl.
(It received black and white underglaze brushwork. ...And now you know who D. is.)
D. brushed the outside of the large, open bowl with black and white. It had to firm up a bit in order to be taken off the plaster hump mold (so the interior could be underglazed), so D. turned to her next bit of work.
This time D. let a thin clay slab drape naturally into a bowl I keep hanging around the studio (spare bowls are very handy as slump molds). The slab formed great curves as it folded into the smaller bowl, curves which she had the good sense to just let be! She added brushwork in the interior of the drapey bowl.
(Some mixing of colors in little cups before brushing. The feathery white will give the colors a floaty looking base.)
We went overtime but there was so much to do! Some days two hours are not enough. Whatever wasn't finished got wrapped up in plastic till next week.
A good day at the pottery studio.