I started off the course with a 6"x6"x1" clay slap that I drew a picture of a Cala Lily on top of and then carved away chunks of the soft clay until I had a basic shape. To get the finer details carved I had to slowly dry the clay and wait until it got to the perfect carving state. Once the project was dried it was fired, black ceramic stain was applied, re-fired, green ceramic stain was applied, re-fired, and then mop and glow was applied to make it shine...I am totally serious about the mop and glow.
Who knew that coil pots don't always have visible coils? I didn't. Mind blown. As I decided on the shape of vase I wanted for my coil pot, I laughed when one of my sketches looked like it had an eye ball sitting on top of it. That's where I got my ah ha for the design. He is a cyclops. This "vase" is 8 inches high and is my first official coil pot. I started out with a 2"x1" circle base and placed a coil around the base then smoothed it down so you could no longer see the coil, this was done all the way to the top. One coil at a time. I carved the iris of the eye, eye brow, and mouth and added the handles to look like ears. Then he was fired. I didn't want him to be Mike Wazowski, so when I applied the terra sigalatta I tried to make him orange. The hard thing was if you added too much of the dye it would end up flaking after firing it. So as you can see the orange is not very strong...but at least he's not green. He was then re-fired, I added a clear glaze on top and on the inside, and re-fired. Everyone still says "Hey, it's Mike Wazowski." So with out further ado, here is Wazowski.
The biggest project we did was a Historical Pottery Replication. The pot I replicated is from Italy; the late 14th century. The original is only 11 inches in height, but my replication is 18 inches in height. This is also a coil pot. Once the pot was leather hard I applied the slip and used dyed slip to paint on the decoration. I absolutely loved this project, even after the amount of hair I pulled out because of it.
