Month: October 2017

For my Dewey Decimal project, I decided to make an magnifying glass that I explain in one of my previous blog posts. It is currently waiting for me to glaze it . It has been bisque fired for about a week and a half; however, I wanted to do test tiles since I decided to us glaze instead of underglaze. I know that using underglaze is not my strong point, I wanted to  plan it out, so I can successfully execute this project that will be displayed in the Media Center. I made four test tiles. One with just white underglaze, one with one coat of white underglaze and one coat of sky blue glaze, one with one coat of white underglaze and two coats of sky blue glaze, lastly, I made one with two coats of sky blue glaze only. These are demonstrated in the pictures below. As for the hand, I used the olive green glaze for the handle on my piece.  I’m planning on using a white underglaze for a streak on the glass part to imitate a reflection.  I wanted to use underglaze so it would be more pigmented and wouldn’t have a glazey look to it. Since I was waiting on the test tiles, I haven’t glazed my piece yet except for using a gray glaze on the rim and handle. I used my prior knowledge of what magnifying glasses look like to pick my colors and my desire to make it look realistic.

This week I have been working on the wheel throwing cylinders. I haven’t had the best of luck with it though. It feels like I’m in Potters Block. So, I read the book on how to throw a cylinder on the wheel. I even watch a few videos Miss.A provided me with. You follow the same instructions as you would when you throw a pot; however, when you start creating the walls you want to make sure that the base of your form is as flat and wide as you want it because once you pull up your walls, you won’t be able to reach it easily. So, once I tried pulling my walls up, that is when my problems occurred. I have not been able to successfully make a cylinder because of my inconsistency in my wall thickness. Either I thin it out at the bottom too much or in the middle, so the form collapsed on itself. I have shown my progress in the pictures;however, there was a couple of days where I was unable to correctly throw any type of pot or cylinder. I noticed that my lip was also a big problem due to me either not centering it well or centering the lip when I first created it. So, Miss A decided that I should try throwing a pot blindfolded. The process definitely helped me regain confidence in what my hands are telling me instead of what my eyes are telling me. I feel more confident in preforming my pot throwing now. I haven’t had a chance to work on the wheel since then, but I feel like I have been “reconnected” with my skills in centering and creating my pieces. This is something I would definitely recommend to someone who is returning to working on the wheel and are having trouble with reconnecting with the process that they were able to preform well beforehand.