Get your clay (about a half pound is a good start for beginners) and start squishing it. Squish on it here, then over there, then there... I advise to not fold it over itself, as that would create what you're trying to get out, air bubbles. Squish your clay until it's workable. You can check your clay by cutting it in half with a wire. When you cut it and don't see any air bubble it should be good to go.
This is how you start to center your clay.
Smack into a round ball. Smack, not pound.
There is no pounding when you try to get centered.
Throw your clay as close to the middle as you can.
You are trying to get centered.
Start spinning the wheel and center your clay. Center the clay by placing one hand on the side the the other on top of the clay ball. The hand on the side should push towards the middle of the wheel and the hand on top should just keep the clay from pushing up into a cone. You will know it is centered when the clay looks like it is not moving but the wheel is moving. This step is extremely important if your clay is not centered it will be difficult/impossible to make a nice pot.
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Mr. Olsen said I would fail 3D art but it turned out failure meant a C. And that was fine with me. It would have been pretty embarassing if I actually failed an art class.
All I did in i high school was go to art class. Well not art class so much as art room. I liked making things. I liked working things into other things. I liked bobbling around and thinking about stories and songs and how colors interacted with them. How peoples heads responded to notes and tunes and words and noises. I was on top of the world. I listened to sunshiney motown music in my minivan every morning. I drank cheap wine on bonfires and beaches every weekend. I read books that I wanted to read for me and not for school. I was surrounded by love and glee in people and in pictures.
I hated 3d art because it scared me. First of all, I hated the soddering iron. Growing up with a firefighter made flame of any kind a scary, scary thing. I didn't want to sodder things. Not a ring, not a scultpure, not a single assignment that brought to mind the scary murmuring of mom-and-stepdad conversations the morning after a brutal fire in which stepdad would not tell details. So those assignments, I avoided.
Moreso than anything, the problem with 3d art was that damn pottery wheel. I hated that pottery wheel. I could not spin. I could not sculpt. My clay was never a distinguishable form before I angrily crumpled it up and threw it into the bins making sluree. I didn't have the patience or the agility. My clay never got centered. If your clay is not centered, you cannot turn it into anything else. So I never made anything because I never got centered, and this and my fear of fire is why I really-but-not-really failed 3d art.
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Wet your hands, and raise the clay into a cone, then squish it down into a thick hockey puck. You can do this a couple of times. It is called wheel wedging and it helps condition the clay. Make sure it is still centered when you are done.
Of course, you cant actually do this if you are not centered. If you're clay is not centered, you're clay is not going to do anything else.
Wet Your hands and stick your thumb slowly into the middle (spinning of course) until it leaves about 1/2 of an inch for the bottom. Also until it make a round hole in the clay.
Wait, what did I just say?! You cant do this if you didn't get centered. Did you ever get centered? IF YOURE CLAY IS NOT CENTERED YOUR CLAY IS NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING ELSE.
Stick your four fingers into the hole, and slowly pull out until the hole is about as big as you want the bottom to be. Place your fingers on the edge of your newly widened hole. Place one hand on the outside and the other on the inside of the clay wall make sure they are directly in line with each other so if you removed the clay from between them your finger tips would touch. Pull up the walls by starting at the base of the pot and pulling towards the top with even pressure on you finger tip. Continue this until you reach your desired height or until the walls are about a centimeter thick.
THIS IS POINTLESS DONT YOU GET IT. YOUR CLAY WAS NOT CENTERED. YOU CANNOT MAKE A POT.
Wet your hands, if you want to shape it, just "cup" the part of it that you want to be smaller then the other. This just take practice to learn.If you want the top to be a bit wider than the neck, slowly pull it out a bit. Not too much, or it'll fall off.
What do you mean by "if you want", you can't want anything, theres nothing to have! You're not making a thing! How are you going to shape something that you never got started correctly in the first place?! You have no foundation. Without a foundation, what do you build on?! You can't make a pot when you never centered your clay, your clay is not alright, your clay cannot do anything else until you first center it!!#! WHEN IS THIS GOING TO GET THROUGH TO YOU!?
When you're finished, get a wire or fishing line, and use it to cut the bottom off the wheel.
When you're finished? What a joke. When did you get started?
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3 comments:
okay heres the thing about that magoo. I failed pottery class too, turns out failing also means getting one of four credits and a two sentence evaluation with a five paragraph essay including a thesis statement of subtext. "...managed to make three small pots...." see you actually can continue to depress your thumb into the clay and pull the walls up. you CAN actually will the clay to take form and defy the laws of centrifugal force to create a form....to a point. and once you reach that point your piece will collapse and your clay will be useless.
you cant wedge it back into usable clay because there will be too much water in it. the molecules will have been stretched too much and it will have irretrievably lost its elasticity (aka the ability to stretch/aka the ability to be flexible/aka the ability to take shape, be something and become useful and have a purpose in the world.) But i had to make 9 pots to get the 4 four goddamned credits and so i defied gravity, pulled the clay, and tried to push it to the center of the board. at which point it usually becomes so uncentered that my plan to ignore centrifugal force becomes impossible.
But i found that as long as I was not obvious and didnt push it to the center I could usually fake it and the clay became almost centered. then I could make the pot which ended up being heavier on one side (the problem which leads to its very demise if left too long or too much expectations are placed on its capacity to continue to grow) as it accommodates for the pull of gravity on its core.
I willed ("mangaged to make") "three small pots...." this way. but they were unsatisfactory lopsided and tiny (any bigger the their defiance of natural laws would have been too obvious).
I willed over the top of natural laws like gravity and what i produced was nothing like the potential of my creativity. My own willing over the top of the process , my own self-centered egoist desire that lead my to think myself larger and more powerful than centrifugal force lead to my own playing small and selling myself short of my potential. And no matter how much i tried to press on and throw a fucking pot the problem would always be represented in some deformity of clay or inconsistency of thickness or inability to throw anything bigger than an ashtray.
I cant will myself through the problem, I have to stop, walk through it and learn what I need to learn. I need to heal from the hurt that lead to the habits that keep me from centering the clay.
i have to do my work about it.
pottery is silly. I might have a fear of it from not being able to center either. But I have a bigger fear of making a perfect pot.
you can work wet into wet
wet can work you into wet
into work wet you can wet
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