Ceramics Starting

These are my works from the
beginning of the semester

This class was challenging to me personally as I had suffered
a wrist injury which I yet haven't recovered from very well.
Regardless, I had a great time.

This is our first work in class. This vessel was our
first learning process. Making the clay, molding it to
remove air, and working on joining different
parts of making the body. This body had a 6-7 inch
requirement in height.









The other part that seemed hard was glazing.
The glaze itself is hard to work with, but after you
get the habit of it, it's all about creativity.
Firing kiln and seeing the the work come out is a great moment.







Working on our first Domon jar.






We used the same concept as we did to create our first vessel.
In this case we had to make a jar almost 17-18 inches high.





I had to be in school for almost all weekends.
It did feel good to work on things and realize it had been almost
8 hours, when I was sure it had been only 30 minutes.





Now that things are taking shape, we usually keep
them moist so we can work it on the next day without
a possibility of cracks and errors.











Yes, these glazes are a real pain, when you are running out of time.
Just a little work and its all good to go.







Now the leather hard vase had come out of the kiln
and has it's shape. We can start glazing it.











It needs much work, but after this we can put it back in the kiln.
Once the glaze melts and sticks to the jar it attains its final form.








This is how it looks like, once it's all finished.








The best part about creating works is, they are all functional.









This was our third work, our second project.
We were to create a figure provided to us by our teacher (as shown).
The result didn't needed to be perfect, our goal was to understand the concept of working with figures.







We used a different clay material and different spray,
as this work was going to the fire kiln outside
(pictures in other blog).












He looks like a comic.












We just had to use our imagination to fill the back side of the figure.










Only being able to use two under-glazes this result was a complete
surprise. The Fire kiln with temperatures reaching up to 2300F (and more) does strange works on the statues and work inside of it.



I am still happy with the strange texture that formed around it.
We had no idea what to expect,
it felt good to hold it in my own hands.

















The details can be seen here.
Next time, I shall use all this knowledge
to improvise on my other bowls and cups.

More works can be seen on other blogs.