Ceramics Workshop

In the ceramics workshop, we first drew ideas of what we would want to later produce.

 

After this we then started to create our pieces from stone clay. I chose to create the bottom left drawing since I liked the design of this more than the others.

 



This was the position I was aiming for with my piece.



 

Firstly, we got a block of clay, rolling pin, two wooden sticks and a piece of hessian to put the clay on so it would be easier to turn when rolling out the clay. We put the clay in the middle of the hessian and the sticks either side. The sticks make sure you don't roll our the clay too thin so it cannot be worked with.

When the clay was rolled out down to the sticks, we placed our hands onto the clay then drew around them to form the basic figure/ starting point. We cut the basic outlines of the hands with a sharp wooden tool.

 

From this point sculpting the hand into the position that I hoped to create, was a challenge since the base wasn't thick enough to hold up the whole sculpture. To solve this, I attached a thicker clay base to the wrist of the hand; this helped a lot for when I started positioning the fingers. When I was positioning some of the fingers, I had trouble when getting them to stay in that position; this resulted in me detaching the fingers from the hand to build them up so they were more likely to stay in the positions that I had put them in before. I reattached them by using slip which consists of clay and water, this then acts as a glue when the surface of where it is going to be placed is scored.

 

Another problem of the process was that it was very difficult to hollow out the centre of the sculpture since the walls of the hand were quite thin so when I attempted to hollow out the piece, holes formed on the side.

 

 

This is what the final result was!
 

 

When we had finished on our individual sculptures, we had to work together to produce a piece. We used a stand to help shape our sculpture and built up the hands to form a bowl like structure.

 

 

 

 

 

Keyword:

• sculpture
• stoneware
• rolling
• kneading
• wedging
• slab building
• firing
• biswit
• glazing
• decorating
• slip