Beginner's guide to throwing a bowl + Metal Rib trick

ladontay I'm really really good at centering and making my cylinder but I just can't make that damn bowl full of your duty Potter's how are you today today I want to talk about something that I feel like we should have gone over as soon as we were doing this any 'video and that's how to make a bolt elbows one of those things that you should really learn how to make right after you're done centering because the boat really teaches you how to form your shape after you're done making your cylinder on the wheel and forming your cylinder at least popping it outwards is one of the very basic things you really need to know to create almost every other shape in ceramic artwork on the wheel well I mean there's a couple exceptions but those are like the tricks I'm top of learning how to make a bowl I kind of want to show you guys that I move with a cheat code this right here is a metal rib a metal rib is one of those things that when I was a beginner I had a really hard time making a bowl and making my outsides really really clean and a metal rib scrapes off all the gunk if you know how to do it correctly and it makes the perfect self-supporting curvature as long as you understand how to pull your walls so if you haven't seen the video on how to pull your walls and Center I will link them down below if you I suggest you take a look at those first because in this video we're concentrating on the bowl we're not at a concentrate on the Centurion you're pulling we're just doing the bulk of the ball I've already made videos for that now there's a bunch of different types of ribs there's wooden ribs there's rubber ribs there's metal ribs hell there's even sponge ribs I prefer them but already because the hardness of and the flexibility of it is very middle of the road a wooden rib is extremely extremely hard and you can't flex it like this a rubber rib isn't really as hard but it's a lot smoother it has more rigidness to it but you could still bend it a little bit but if you have a good metal rib you can mount this thing back and forth and it stays exactly in the shape it's supposed to stand not only that it has a self-supporting curvature on this side so you can put it inside your bowl push outwards and it automatically makes this curvature right here and you could also flex on the outside and make whatever curvature you want on this side so we're gonna go to the wheel right now we're going to show you guys how to make a bowl and then after that I'm gonna make one more ball and I'm gonna show you guys how to move it the cheat code [Music] just as a real quick aside now I noticed that of a lot of beginner students whenever they start to pull out they pull out far beyond the limits of their actual cylinder so so for example they'll start to pull here and they'll go to this space here while the very base of their clay is right here so please don't pull beyond this point it would be a really difficult thing if you pulled about this far out and start it from here making a bowl now you're a little bit off balance unless you're experienced you're not gonna know how to pull your cylinder up and have it be steady on this base right here while the actual cylinder is over here Potter tip so usually what I like to do even when I'm making my larger forms is I'll always make sure it's in kind of a triangle shape and I'll always pull the walls in to this right here and you see how this is kind of a triangle shape this isn't beyond this point right here if it is it's gonna make it a tiny bit harder for me as you start to pull you're most likely gonna end up pulling in this direction which is gonna make your cylinder much larger anyway you don't want it to get any larger than it is right now until you're ready to make it larger also I like to have the very bottom of my cylinder about right here and if you don't know what I'm talking about what you can do is take this pin tool stick it all the way to the bottom till it reaches the wheel head and then take your finger and put it all the way down to the pin tool until it reaches the clay hold it there and then pull it out this is how much space you have in between the wheel head and the very very bottom of your clay this is a good amount of space this is about a half an inch and I like to have a little bit more space because whenever I'm trimming I feel like I'm gonna go through the body whenever I'm making a bowl I simply leave a little bit more space than I really need the majority of people I know leave it about right here it's about 1/4 of an inch [Music] now you're making a bull and because you're beginner your teacher most likely told you to weigh out your clay and not use too much clay but I'm using a big amount of clay so I think one pull is good enough now if I decided to do two more pools I'd probably end up off camera screen so you've already centered you've already made your cylinder you've already made sure it's nice and straight its name is Jeff so what are you gonna do now here's what I want you to do I want you to wet your hand stick it at the very bottom of your cylinder right here and push outwards with your fingers like this funcle' your fingers inwards and simply lift because the clay has an action vs. reaction if I decide to go right here and I decide to push with a moderate amount of pressure and keep that pressure on you see it'll start to change shape your job is to make it do that all the way up to the body that's all a bowl is a bowl is really just you pushing your fingers outwards for an extended period of time until you reach the very top with the same amount of pressure and that's a very key component is to say the same amount of pressure make sure the inside of your cylinder is nice and wet I'm gonna get my hand I'm gonna stick it all the way down until I can pretty much reach the very bottom of my cylinder where the clay is stopping me I'm gonna brace my hand right here and I'm gonna crunkle my fingers outwards and keep pushing and go upwards while the wheels spinning [Music] this is essentially how you make a bowl now let me show you one little trick that a lot of Potter's seem to have a problem with let's imagine that this right here is really messed up yeah mess it up Masuda yeah Becky with the good hair yeah flipping hey guys look it's modern art this right here is not what I want for my top I don't want this I don't know what happened I don't know if I didn't watch correctly I didn't know if I didn't cut up and down enough times I don't know what's going on but I know that this is not gonna get a proper grade for a beginner I don't want this what am I gonna do okay Jacob calm down calm down I want you to get your pin tool right here no it's not called the pokey thing like you're all calling it it's called the pin tool once you have your pin tool in hand I want you to get your left hand if you're right-handed it's vice versa if you're right-handed and put it right here the wheel spins and lightly touch it don't spin fast it's been very slowly then I want you to get this pin tool and put it in a diagonal angle towards the clay right here and just let it ride on that clay right so your finger and this pin tool should are about to meet they're about to kiss my do not and I repeat do not stick it straight into the clay body I will find you and I don't even know but make sure you put a diagonal angle and make sure it just rides along here if you poke it straight in words you're gonna poke yourself and that's not the key your fingers are supposed to meet like this not like this and keep on letting your wheels spin just like this and once the end of the pin tool touches the inside of your finger all you got to do is lift it will come straight off and straighten itself out this is a really good trick that someone taught me when I first started making my bull and it saved me a hundred billion I can't count that high Times Potter tip when you're almost done with your bowl what you want to do is get your sponge get whatever piece of soft material you have and go ahead and make an arc right over this edge right here and push down a little bit this is gonna smooth out this edge right here because it needs to be in a little bit of a circle formation it'll most likely chip if it's square from its sides but if it's circular and you go ahead and batten it down like this it's a lot smoother it's a lot easier and play able to eat from it chips a lot less it's just a better experience overall Potter's have a bunch of different materials for doing this I like to just use my mud tools sponge but a lot of people use those little iPod foamy things that clean your iPod some people use a lambskin I'm gonna cut this in half now just so you guys can see what's going on the inside all right we're cutting the cylinder in half see that that's how much space I have at the very bottom of my bowl you guys have to remember that you're gonna have to trim this down sooner or later to make a proper foot so when we were getting the pin to him we were sticking it down like this and putting our finger right here this is essentially how much space I had at the very very bottom and that's how I was testing it I think that's a pretty good depth right there that's about maybe half an inch to 3/4 of an inch at the most but what I really wanted you guys to see was the fact that when you're done making a cylinder what you're really doing is you're just pushing your fingers out and pushing this right here to make a bowl that's all a bowl is is you're just pushing these inner walls out from this point right here to make a nice smooth Bowl does it work can I do it with it oh yes I know a lot of you aren't gonna want to do this but what you really should do is after you're done making your first bowl cut it in half see if your walls are nice and even and see how you did this tells you a lot about how you made your bowl the inside of your walls tell you a lot about how you're pulling how hard you're pulling how tall your cylinder was how thick your bottom is this is an inside look of what you're doing and what you could be doing those are some tips and tricks on how to make a regular bowl but I'm about to show you how to move with a cheat code [Music] now here's the thing with the metal riff the majority of you most likely just have a wooden rib so it has this straight edge right here and there's nothing we could do about that you need to upgrade your equipment son and some of you might also have the rubber rib the rubber rib does the same thing a metal rib does except for I like the metal rib a little bit better because it takes off a lot of the Slough and the slip on the outside of a cylinder something that's a little bit more difficult to do with a rubber rib this time instead of putting your hand in here and pushing outwards to make a bowl just like this what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your metal rib you're gonna curve it to whatever curvature you want your bowl so if you want a straight V shaped Bowl you're gonna leave it just like this and push this up against this right here if you want a curved one you're gonna do this and do the same exact thing the key component here is you want to push your clay body on to this edge right here let's say you made some lines and your stuff you really don't like it's all messed up now actually that looks kind of good to be honest with you and you want to erase them you want to get rid of them here's what you do go ahead and take your hands and start to push out just like the first time you made a bowl except for this time take your metal rib and go ahead and scrape the outside of your body right on there [Music] check it out I just got a bunch of access clay and all the little lines I made on my cylinder are now gone I just erased my mistakes and if you're extremely extremely new and you're just trying to pass that class there's always this curvature right here if you take this and push this on the inside of your cylinder as it spins and slowly start to push outwards and move it upwards as you do you will start to see that it will start to make its own little self-supporting curvature but you have to be really careful and go really slow with it you can also take this metal rib make your own little curvature and go ahead and push this up against the body of this as it spins and make sure that your fingers are pushing up against it at the same time so don't hold it like this hold it sideways and go ahead and let it spin as you go ahead and push your fingers out to make whatever size Bowl you want sooner or later your hands are gonna touch and you're gonna get that perfect stability and of course I have a little bit of unevenness at my very top here so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use that trick I learned before from earlier in the video and I'm gonna go ahead and cut this off and then I'm gonna go ahead and smooth this very top part out because we're not savages and there you go you have made your very first nice nice Bowl your teacher is gonna click clay on the finger clay on the finger the outside is nice and smooth whoo your teacher will be impressed and there you go you've made your very first nice nice Bowl congratulations you just you deserve a dirty hand a dirty hand clap now you got to do is safely take this off the wheel put it in the damp room and trim it good luck with that and we're just gonna cut this in half boom [Music] and look at that we got some pretty nice even walls there the depth is a little deeper than I like it but heck I'm gonna trim it later anyway Potter tip I would actually much rather this would be a little bit thicker than usual then it'd be thinner because if it's thinner I might fail and create a hole when I'm trimming but if it's thicker I can always trim that piece away so when you're starting to open your hole right before you feel like you're going a little bit too deep pull away you really don't need that thin of a bottom you don't have to get it perfect every time and you can always leave it a little bit thicker than thin that way you can save the bowl if it's too thin it's much harder to add clay than it is just to take away clay well thank you guys very much for joining me I really hope that helps you guys because the basic message on how to make a bowl is to put your hand on the inside of your cylinder and push outwards at a consistent pressure while you're trying to make whatever curvature you're trying to make but that's for a very standard Bowl there's hundreds of other different types of bowls that I hope to cover on this channel sooner or later what I really wanted to deliver to you guys was the metal grip the metal grip you can do a lot of things with you can make designs with it you can scrape you can even burnish with it the metal rib is really really instrumental in making a bowl so I really hope this video helps you guys use that metal roof you never played with it before and I really hope this helps some beginners pass past their class they'll thank you guys very much for joining me and now I will see you dirty putters next week [Music] why did you cut me in half I had a family

Channel: Earth Nation Ceramics

Views: 101,215

Rating: 4.9078083 out of 5

Keywords: pottery, clay, make, craft, centering, wheel thrown, glaze, glaze recipes, cone5, cone6, kiln, art, artists, sacramento, ceramic, ceramic art

Id: Nzq2Yd7mlsk

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2017