Pottery, so far...

Well, I've been in my class for several weeks now and I finally got some pieces back.

This casserole was my first piece.  We rolled out slabs of clay then draped it over a mold.  I liked this one a lot.  Then I painted on a green slip, which is tinted clay.  I don't like the green so much.  then I put an active glaze in the bottom, then an inactive clear glaze over the whole thing.  I don't think the two glazes reacted well together because the blue looks all funky.  The clear is very nice.  I love this red clay, I love the specks that showed up through the green slip and clear glaze. 

The second one I did, rolled slab that "slumped" into a mold.  In this case I used a glass pie plate.  It was a MESS!  I did not roll out a big enough slab to fill in the whole plate so I compensated by making weird handle.  Then I tried out a relief, by making a swirl pattern in the bottom of the plate. Then used an Active glaze.  I really love this blue.  You can see how active it is cuz it ran off the edges and shows the red clay nicely.  I had to much on the piece cuz you can see the dark areas where it pooled then got funky.  I do like this glaze a lot and plan to use it for my next group.  I don't like the pattern, but thought it was neat to see how the relief worked.

This is another slab, draped over a Styrofoam meat tray.  you can see the distinct lines along the edges where the tray ended.  Jane, our teacher wanted us to try out some "scratch" techniques, and I wanted to keep it simple, so I drew these hills and the moon.  I put some white glaze in the moon, then blue glaze over it all, then green on top of the blue for the hills.  Well, live and learn... I should not have put the green over the blue, cuz now it is just black..  but everyone in the class said it is good, cuz it is a night scene.  I'll go w/that one.  The I painted on the clear glaze over the whole piece.  Oh.. I accidentally jammed the side w/the back of my paintbrush when painting on the white glaze, so Jane said.. Just leave it and add a few more.  So, now I have these cute little dots on each side.

During the first slab class I made a long rectangular tray, but it mysteriously went missing.  I have no idea what happened to it.

Next class we continued w/slab, but we rolled a slab around a mold to make a cylinder, then cut a base and attached the upright cylender to the base.  This was hard... I kept jacking mine up.  So I decided that would "artfully" make dents all round the sides.  Then double dipped into first an antique blue opaque glace, then into a black glaze.  It is of interest  to note how the black glaze reacted differently depending on what glaze it went over.  If it went over an active shiny glaze, then it stayed shiny... over an inactive opaque glaze, it remained opaque.  Kind of neat.   I might try black over that blue (from the pie plate on one of my bowls).

I learned the wheel last week, got four pieces made, this week I trimmed the bottoms and set them aside to dry.  I got three more pieces thrown on the wheel as well.. Way Cool!!!  What fun.. now I want my own studio.