Handbuilding Weeks 5 & 6

Yes, yes I got behind! But at the end there is a bonus of a workshop I did of inlaid slip into Terra Cotta Pavers

 

Handbuilding Week 5 

Darting  vessels and adding clay into cuts

Okay so I’m really hooked on the brayer as a method of sealing the clay onto itself.  Darting is where you cut a slit or a leaf shape or a triangle out of the piece and close up the gap to change the shape of your pot.

Darted Tall Pitcher

I made a basethe-base-b4-darting

and darted it at the bottom. Where I wanted it wider, I slit it, spread it apart and added a triangle of clay. any time I attached clay to clay, I thinned it so the walls would basically be the same thickness all round.

Here it is, awaiting a triangle of clay to be added.base-after-darting-bottom-and-opening-top

In retrospect, I wouldn’t have darted it down there. I think it made it a lot weaker. Where I wanted it narrower, I cut slits and folded them overlapping. After I got the base attached, I darted in the top part and then added several more tiers. You can see on the right where I’ve made a slice and will thin that and then fold it in to overlap and make the opening narrower.

adding-the-next-tier

I just kept adding wide strips of  slightly hardened slabs and finally added a handle. The piece turned out quite tall. 

Then I scored and wet it a bit. To press it together, I used a brayer which gave me a great surface quality.

I supported on the inside and went over the area-to-be-joined with a brayer; pressing it down and bonding it together.

I also used the brayer at a slight angle on either side of the handle.

and Voila! a huge piece!

finished-tall-piece

Darted Bowl

This is a great and simple project. I took a circle and made 4 cutscircle-with-4-cuts

I brayer-ed the edges to make them thinner so they are less likely to have the strength to warp away from the joint and also to have a consistent thinness throughout the bowl.brayer-ing-edges-2b-thin

Then I fold them up and overlapped them.

folded-bowl

Added matching feet and there I have a nice serving bowl. The white mark is the slip that I put my signature on.

the feet have the same casual look and construction to match.
the feet have the same casual look and construction to match.

 

 

 

 

HANDBUILDING WEEK 6

Faceting, slip transfer, sgraffitto

 

Faceting a vertical vessel

So, you can get springs in all shapes and sizes from, say,  the back of a spiral notebook to the inside of a ball-point pen. It’s a good idea to stretch these out a bit as too tight a coil has too high a profile so the clay gets caught in the narrow spaces between the coils in stead of cutting cleanly through.stretched-spring-wire-springabove is (from bottom to top) a spring that has not been stretched at all, a regular wire (you can also use a cheese cutter )for flat cuts and that same type spring all stretched out and ready to use.

Start by making a very basic vessel. I just shoved the end of this dowel rolling pin into a rectangle- it could be a round shape.beginning-vessel-to-be-faceted

After I opened it a bit,rolling-a-little-to-open-the-vessel

I took the stretched out fine spring that someone got at a resource center and cut in various ways down the thick walls.

beginning-the-faceting-cutAt one point I cut all the way through but I just reattached that and re-cut it shallower.

 

You can change directions with the wire or let one end curve ‘round to make a dynamic pattern.

facetingpulling-off-the-cut-off-piecethe-result-of-faceting-with-a-springlg-piece-faceted-all-the-way-round

I also made little pots for glaze tests out of the pieces I sliced off.pieces-made-from-cut-off-pieces

Mary Ellen had a really good time with the wire.mary-ellen-facetingmes-result

 

Student Work

Roya is working on a piece that looks pretty fabulous 

royas-bowl-with-some-slip-applied

plus look at how great her slip painting turned out- this is blues and greens under Celadon.royas-lovely-painterly-dish

Leah is making an old man jug that has a great expression!leahs-pitcher-in-progressleahs-grandpa-pitcher-faceWhat a character!

 

Transferred Slip Design

Another thing we tried this week was transferring slip.

I threw out a slab of stoneware and then covered it with white slip.

Then, using black slip, I painted a tree on a piece of newspaper and then pressed it onto the slab.slip-transfer-just-b4rubbing-it-onpulling-off-the-newspaper Not all the slip stuck but that gave it a cool texture and look.

I plan to build a house like box with this slab. Remember my shadows of trees on buildings entry? (here)

For my last demo, I gave a quick lesson on sgraffitto since it is the main kind of work I do. I painted the surface with slip, drew an image on it and carved away all the negative space. You can see photos of this on my “How to make a Picture Vase” entry.

 

After class I taught a Terra Cotta Pavers workshop. They came out so great that I took pictures and thought I’d add that technique to this entry.

Inlaid colored clay

Start with two  contrasting colors of clay; in this case I wanted to inlay high fire white into Terra cotta. I had students draw life size pictures and then lay thin coils of the white clay over their drawings. This even worked exceptionally well for a 4 year old & mom team.* note if you do words, lay them out in mirror writing or they will be backwards!

After you have your pattern laid out,face-beforeput a fairly thick pad of clay over the coils. These were extra thick as they are meant to be garden pavers (stepping stone type things). Once they are in place, pound the back evenly with your fist or the flat of your hand. You may also use a rolling pin.

Then just flip them over!inlaid-face-afterIt’s hard to make a bad one!

inlaid-fish-bonesinlaid-ferns

 

Lastly, I have added “after” photos to several entries as I’ve gotten the pieces back from the glaze kiln. Check out how Inlaid Slip turned out!

Building Clay Capacity in the Classroom

First lesson plan

Philosophy:

I do not offer the children tools to begin with as they become fascinated with the tools and do not use their hands. I believe students should build their small muscle co-ordination as well as their confidence with the clay by having direct contact and learning to make the basic shapes that are the building blocks of most forms.

Because clay is stronger when rolled and compressed,  it’s good to teach the students to go through the steps to make the 3 basic shapes. 

These shapes can be used to make just about everything.

snakes

balls 

pancakes

pancake-coil-ball

One can make so many things with these forms! 

Then there are variations and combinations of the forms. As the kids become more proficient at making them, they can progress to the more advanced uses. 

Let me interject an essential note in here. It is not important for kids to make projects. For young children, the process is far more important than the outcome.

pancake-note-poked-piece-at-r

  But projects are also a great way to add value to what they are learning. If you are studying bugs for example, then it’s a vehicle to discuss how many legs or eyes insects have vs. how many spiders have.

students-ant

1. The ball is  a great head or body as well as smaller ones for eyes etc. Often it is the first step that leads to a pinch pot or a round pancake.

Student’s favorite Ball project: a snowman

snowman

2. Snakes or coils as they are called, become arms and legs

spiderman

and later, coil pots and  handles; thicker coils become the bodies of many things- 

the “yam” shape is handy for dinosaurs and birds 

“potato” for heavy bodied animals like elephants and hippos 

“carrots” become humans.

3. Pancakes are basically slabs and you can make many hollow forms with them but in the beginning, they also function as a great base for many kids’ projects and serve to support the often thin and fragile things kids make. 

animal

Projects

Good first projects with balls, snakes & pancakes are:

bugs – bugs have lots of legs and eyes and the balls can be bodies- spiders, caterpillars, ants, etc. 

spider

Octopus- again, lots of legs and a big ball for the head.

student's octopus-with-decorations

Turtles- throw the ball down on the table so it is a half a sphere – that is the shell, an asterisk of 3 snakes become the four legs, head and tail and a small pancake is the chest plate.

Porcupines and hedgehogs: have the kids poke their fingers into a medium sized ball to make many holes and then insert short snakes into all the holes. Add a face.

These are all ideas about getting the kids started but what we ended up talking about to the kids was 

“making the clay strong”.

I got this idea talking to the 4th graders. I am far too frequently asked things like “Can I decorate it?”  “Can I make a dog instead?”  or ” Is it okay if I paint it red?” These are questions of aesthetics.

“I am here”, I explain to the 4th graders, “to make sure whatever you decide to make doesn’t fall apart. In a perfect world, we would all go down to the side of the river and find some clay and you could all experiment for as long as you liked to see what would work and eventually through trial and error, you would figure out how to make things that didn’t fall apart. 

Unfortunately we don’t have that luxury.  You only have 40 minutes once a week. So I am here to help be a shortcut for you to learn about how to make your clay pieces strong.”

So when I was working with the kindergartners, I talked a lot about a piece being strong or not strong. Having a pancake underneath was a big feature. 

As I have been teaching for almost 20 years, I see certain recurring themes among early childhood  students and clay.

There is the Pieced together Really Long Snake (a favorite of my son) The student wants to make the longest snake ever.

the-pieced-together-coil

Many enterprising students love the Parts of the Face

students-heart-face-2dstudents-mask-2dThese are really just clay “drawings” and as such qualify more as 2-D but what is important about them is that students see they can make a shape in 3-D and flatten it into the appropriate shape in 2-D. 

A variation on this is the flat flower. I don’t have an example today but believe me, I’ve seen many.

A huge favorite is the Birthday Cake

birthday-cake

followed closely by all sorts of food chief among them, a taco and a burrito and a hot dog.

Then there’s the clay “toy”. It could be a spaceship, a dinosaur or a race car. These are thrown together as fast as possible so they can be played with and they have very short lives.

dinosaur-too-weak-too-many-separate-partsThe student must hold the head up but he doesn’t mind. This is a flexible moving thing he’s made- he doesn’t perceive it as something that must be fired and turned to stone.

As you can see from that dinoaur, children tend to think of living things in parts and they make them all separate and then attempt to join them together. It is sometimes difficult to get them to make the head, neck, body and tail of a dinosaur all out of one piece of clay which would make it a lot stronger (and more realistic looking too!) –I need to get a photo of that up

Animal  Families are another favorite. Note we had to keep adding pancakes under this snail family as it grew.

snail-familyWell, we have only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg here in things to consider when teaching clay to young children. 

Perhaps you should sit by the side of the river and find out what works and what doesn’t!

To review:

Process not Product.

wonderful

Good technique leads to strong pieces.

Students can always learn about more than just the clay; clay is ideal for tying in with many curricula.

But that’s a topic for another day!