This is my beginning pottery lesson. I'm taking pottery lessons for my school project, known as J(January)-Term. This was my first lesson.
The place I'm taking pottery lessons at is the Idaho Art Lab. It's a cool place. Dan teaches the pottery, and therefore is teaching me to use a pottery wheel.
This is me - before. As you can see with the clothing selection, I was wearing old clothes for this. Not shown are some shoes Mom and I picked out at the DI - old shoes. We learned from Steve - wear old shoes!
The first part of the lesson was recycling clay. To recycle clay, you take the old clay and put water with it. When you need to use it, you dump out the clay onto a big flat 'bowl' and let it dry out to the right consistency. (AKA, wet enough to mold but dry enough to hold its shape). This is step one of using a pottery wheel.
Just so you know, cold clay is gross to the touch. It is much better warm.
After that, you wedge. Wedging clay gets rid of air bubbles, which make your bowls/cups/other assorted made item lopsided. The first part of wedging involves throwing the clay! You throw it onto any kind of hard, clean surface and you will hear a pop like bubble wrap. I had to do this a couple of times.
After throwing the clay, you get to do some other form of wedging. The basis of wedging is to get rid of air bubbles. I was only good at one version - the ram's head version. The basic idea is you roll the clay, then you shove down with your palms, hoping blindly to keep the clay from getting out of your hands.
After finishing wedging, you ball the clay. Why? Because it is easier to shape a pot from a ball than a ram's head of clay. Simple.
The next part of pottery is learning to center. However, you don't get to do anything until you learn the 'mantra' of pottery. It is:
Keep it wet. Easy in. Easy out.
Basically, it means to keep the clay (and your hands) wet, so it is easy to work with, and to ease pressure on and off the clay.
So, finally on to centering. When you are right-handed (like me) you kick with your left leg and do heavy pressure with your left hand. The right leg doesn't do anything (except keep you balanced) and your right hand does little detail work.
However, when working the wheel, you can't kick while shaping! And the wheel can't slow down too much. Therefore, this is where 'easy in easy out' comes into play. You kick the wheel to speed and then do some work on the clay. However, when the wheel starts to slow down some, you stop and kick.
To center clay, you basically press the left side of the clay with your left hand, and 'karate-chop' the top. Same pressure, your clay does not try and fly into your lap. (I actually had it fall off the wheel once) Same idea if you have to center it. AGAIN. (I kept having to center it. I'm pretty good at it by now.)
After you center the clay (finally), you get to shape it! But don't get impatient - you don't get to make bowls. You make the tuna can and the soda can.
Here is the tuna can - it does look like one, right? The soda can is taller and skinnier (merely because you make it taller...and skinnier by applying pressure).
I made four of these things. Of course, most of them off-centered and I had to have Dan help me center, but beyond that, these are mindlessly easy.
After having made four of these cute little things, I was done for the day. Sticking fingers in clay was saved until next week.
