Pothead News

Got your attention, didn't I? So what if it's false advertising! :p

As promised, here's some more pottery pix.

Last week, I showed you this, promising that despite the yellow substance covering this thing, it was going to come out a delicate shade of green.

So, here it is:
I can't seem to make my phone focus on close objects, sorry for the fuzzy picture.

I'd textured this quite a bit, you only get a hint of that in the pic. Oh well. Also, this glaze doesn't really highlight texture - unlike some others that really change color (green to black, or black to blue, or grey to red...), I'll experiment with another similarly-textured piece next week, maybe there'll be a better effect then?

And what, you ask, is this piece for? Like I said, I didn't create it with anything in mind, but it turns out it's the perfect size for a tea light :-) Here's a totally set-up shot of the cat checking it out with candle within.

And remember that coiled bowl with the mini coils around the edge? Holy cow that took forever to glaze because I wanted to do so much with it, but the holes along the rim made for glaze leaking where I didn't plan on, and I had to figure out the order in which to do the glazing, and everything went pretty much awry... so much so I didn't even bother getting a pic of it before its final firing. We'll just see it in its full splendour? horror? next week :p

So, that was a major learning experience all by itself.

Then add to that my first time using the wheel.

I'll spare you the details.

Here are the results -->

What, they don't look like anything you'd expect?

Well, I was doing all my wheel work after the official class time, so I didn't have the instructor around for help and advice, and I was kinda working from the memory of his demonstration earlier in the day (which then got overwritten by the whole glazing-the-bowl endeavour!), remembering more things as I went along, but still, messing up every time.

So these bridges? That's what we were told to do with things that didn't go well - can't immediately reuse the clay because it's way too wet, so making them into this bridge thingy helps the clay get to a uniform dryness.

Four bridges, four tries.
ONE came out semi-decent. Or rather, one actually took shape, LoL!

I debated whether to keep it or not, you know, "my first wheel product" but decided I was going to have plenty of dust gatherers already, let's not add yet another. So squish squish squish and into a bridge it turned :-)

I'm confident that based on all that went wrong this week, I'll have a much better feel for the wheel next time. More updates then.

Ciao!