Soft Slab Process (March 10, 2015)

I made the body of my mug with a rolling pin. I wedged a ball of clay and rolled it into a ball. Then, I stuck a rolling pin through the clay, and rolled it until the walls of the mug were even and of good thickness. I cut of any excess clay. I rolled out a slab of clay, and traced the bottom of the body of the mug onto the clay. Then, I used a needle tool to cut it out. I scored the bottom of the mug and the base of the mug, the applied slip to stick them together. I "moved" the clay around in that area to remove the line. I wanted to make a more of a unique mug, so I decided to squish the sides of the mug a bit. It turned out to be a pointy-ish mug. I am constantly fascinated by nature. So, I decided to make a volcano. As I stuck on lava onto the mug, I changed my mind and decided to go with a more humorous theme. I changed and made a person's head instead. The "lava" became hair. To make the hair, I rolled out clay, cut it, and flattened it. Then, I scored and slipped it onto the mug. I added eyes (glasses), a nose, and incised a mouth. I used circles and a tiny bit of clay to make the glasses and a ball of clay to make the nose. I scored and slipped those onto the mug. Then, I stuck a tongue in the mouth. I thought about making ears as the handle of the mug. Then it'll kind of be like a baby sippy cup with handles on the side. I thought it would be more interesting if I made a handle out of coils combined together. I rolled out thin pieces of coil and combined it together to form a handle. I attached the handle onto the side of the face. Finally, I polished up and smoothed it out. Then I left it out for it to reach bone-dry stage for it to fire in the kiln. I think it turned out pretty well.

This one was made mainly with adding clay and incising.

After it was fired in the kiln, I put glaze on it. (the diff. types of glaze i used you can read about in my sketchbook). Before putting it in the kiln, I made sure that the bottom was clear of glaze, or it would stick to the bottom of the kin. (ceramic golden rule) I made my project even worse. It looked like it had some kind of deadly skin disease. I caused it to have a skin disease because I didn't put the layers of glaze on very evenly. The places where it is darker is due to not putting enough glze on it. The hair and sunglasses and handle (I think) turned out okay, but the nose, tongue, and skin turned out kinda bad. After this, I learned to be more careful when glazing.