My Ceramic Experience in 2012: Part 2

In part 1 I described my experiences in my second ceramics class which happened roughly a year ago. Part 2 will focus on September and October of last year when I took my third ceramics class. In this class, I was allowed to hand build again and I wanted to refine everything I had learned from the previous classes. The projects I would work on would focus mostly on mastering techniques such as pinching, coil building, soft slabs, hard slabs, and a combination of both. Aside from focusing on techniques, I wanted to give my project a natural, organic look. I wanted my ceramic work to look less like they were constructed and more like they had grown from nature. I also wanted to continue to work with the throwing wheel even though I preferred hand building. Sadly, I didn't have enough time to focus on that.

September 2012

The first projects I started were three dish-like pieces that were meant to hang on a wall. I used glaze three glaze combinations for each of them. This one picture is the only picture from September. When I get around to talking about November and December, there will be more pictures.

9/11/12: The first three projects are early in development at this point. The texture on the bottom piece changed after this picture was taken.

October 2012

The projects I started working on at this point were getting larger. My next projects were going to be based on slab construction, one soft and one hard.

10/2/12: The slab projects in progress.  The hard slab piece is on the left and the soft slab piece is on the right.

10/9/12: The overall forms have been completed up to this point and some of the rough parts of the  two pieces have been smoothed over. The texture of course has not yet been added.

10/9/12: On the same day the form was completed, the texture work was also completed. 

10/23/12: Some of the work is done firing, although the hard slab piece had to be re-fired due to damages that occurred during the first glaze firing. The coil piece was starting to come along rather quickly.

The projects up to this point had made progress so quickly that I couldn't take too many pictures that I would consider significant towards capturing the progress of my work. Throughout November and December, the projects would become more difficult, take longer, and as a result would have more pictures. That'll be revealed in the next entry.