Throwing Up

A few weeks ago I finished up my second clay class and the Museum, and this time around I've been learning how to throw on the wheel. This is something I've wanted to learn how to do for a while now, and since the Museum has such a extensive clay studio, it's been a great place to learn.

I've destroyed the vast majority of my pieces to study them, but I did save two for the sake of trying out some glazing. Here they are:

For this cereal-sized bowl I used two different glazes, a light, textured blue and a dark brown. Since the brown was so dark and saturated, I decided to dip most of the bowl in the blue glaze, giving the piece asymmetrical balance. The olive streak you see in the middle there is where the two colors overlapped.

And of course, since this is the Fanciful Lobster after all, I added two of them on the bottom on a whim:

Here's the second piece:

This piece was also supposed to be a regular cereal-sized bowl, but during the throwing process I pulled up too hard and made one side of the rim taller than the other. I was going to destroy it, but my teacher suggested that it would make an ideal batter bowl, so I took the uneven rim and pulled it down into a pitcher shape. The handle is a hand-built braided coil.

I also carved some lines into the bowl when it was still leather-hard for added texture:

I used three glazes for this piece. First I held it by the handle and dipped it into a pale yellow. Once that dried, I flipped it around and submerged the handle in a light green. Finally, I took a brown glaze and painted it around the rim. 

My plan is to spend the summer practicing on the weekends. With time and effort, my skills will improve and I'll be able to create more pieces. In the meantime, I don't think this is too shabby a start, considering two months ago I'd never so much as sat at a wheel. 

Huzzah for learning new skills!