Wet Slabs Techniques SSR

all right before the fire you got to learn to make it so I'm gonna go over slab building techniques in this video I'm professor Stephen Robinson I'm gonna discuss wet slab techniques in this video tube techniques are some that I'm going to show along with some freehand ideas everything that you're gonna do is additive subtractive and in clay it's also expansive so here we go I'm gonna go over the basics of rolling on a slab using a simple rolling pin and I asked you to purchase rolling pins sometimes and in this particular course you're gonna use these boards as you get some boards to a nice board that's smooth like this would be the best MDF works really good or a board that's covered in canvas works too if you choose to actually cover a canvas board so your clay is gonna come you have some pogs some we already picked that up if we had some available also the purchase stuff that comes in these square blocks depending on where you get it so if you have leftover clay you really need to learn how to wedge and that's a whole different technique that I can go over so let me know about that but with this it's already de-aired and it's something that you can beat out first that's kind of like you can make a slab I just patty taking things you can amble it if you have to use the rolling pin to do this process I choose the weight of the rolling pin but if you do it too long in one place no matter what board you have putting on the wetness of the clay it could start sticking maybe you see this there's a little wetter so you can just move it to another surface okay you can just move it to the silver surface and then it won't stick as you start to roll it out it's important to keep in mind too because as I roll it on a move you put pressure on it to pressure this way and that way and I'll further reiterate that when you see the rolling pin so once I get it now closed maybe what I want I got it smacking it down with my hand then I can start using a rolling pin I could use the rolling pin right away but it seems like a lot of work so I'm to see how I'm rolling it I'm gonna make it more even if I roll one way then I roll the other way so I want to even slab another way to get even slabs if you get sticks you can put sticks on both sides of that slab and you can roll that rolling pin over it and then move it again move those sticks like this and then roll it and you see that it the rolling pin is gonna hang up on the stick so it's not gonna get any thinner than the stick so you can get a specific thickness and even thickness to your slabs by using sticks that are a certain thickness and then you would get a slab like that that's about a quarter-inch what I'm going to ask primarily is a little more than a quarter inch and a quarter inch is about a pencil this is a good starting point for most of the projects we'll be working on so if I just roll one way what's gonna happen it's gonna get too thin in one area that's why I'm saying you gotta roll both ways if I roll over it two or three times one way two or three times the other way and then I pick it up and then move it that's gonna allow me to have the slab kind of not be stuck to the board also it also allows the slab to grow now if I cut this slab even though I didn't use a stick if I'm really careful about going back and forth like that it's gonna be pretty even if I want really tight really even thickness on the whole slab I might want to go again to using some kind of slats that the rolling pin hangs up boy okay I'm going to talk about some loose lab techniques using a male mold so a positive shape of some sort that you can use a form that you would be rolling or laying the clay over so with this loose slab technique you do need to resist the object that you're going to use it could be round it could be square these are just some everyday common ones when you put the paper on newspaper or some kind of paper that's not real glossy that's going to stick to the kleiss of this paper being just regular old newspaper it's going to absorb the water from the clay and peel off the clay on the interior that form very easily so I'm going to put it on there and we'll put a small piece of tape in an area the most important part here is that it slides Boateng off the form so when you wrap that form whatever that for maybe with paper you have to make sure that the paper is not really tight on it so it needs to slide off so this hard object again could be a 4x4 or it could be some found object even a bottle a glass bottle plastic objects rectangular square or round but the one major issue is that that form has to have some kind of way that it will slide off of there so if it does something where it undulates that's this is not going to be a technique you would use for that know if you have a log or two it doesn't have to just be one piece so this is from this real small tube and so I measured five inches up here and I mark the line and now I'm just going to cut it through slowly spinning it here on the turntable to let it cut clean through everywhere okay so now instead of one piece I have two pieces out of that same process of course you could do a really long piece of PVC tubing get a hardware store and do like six cups at at the same time so I'm going to I'm going to dart these let's start out by actually starting where the seam is but before I do that I'm gonna finish the lip and put a bottom on them yeah kind of throwing in a little smoothing it out browning it up a little so it's not that cut shape I'm also going to get in there and just rip that interior to okay I'm gonna cut this bottom off here which applied this slab my scoring slipping and using just a little bit of pressure but I like to go back after I cut it off and make sure I'm pretty well joined up sometimes it over just paddle the bottom slightly then I might put it like on a turntable here and use a stiff brush down in the bottom kind of again like the way my finger would act well and now I'll get to the dirty part now since I know where the seam is here I'm gonna take this area and I'm gonna cut just below where I might put a handle kind of the leaf shape out of there of course the the size of the shape and the different shapes that you can possibly choose are going to dictate where the clay is going to move to after you remove it all right so after I remove it I can take that area score it slip it and I like to kind of score and slip at the same time sorta so I'm dipping my scoring tool in that water slurry and then just pushing it coalition coercing it together like this and I'd like to get that seam so it's more closed on the interior than on the exterior because I can fix the exterior easier so I'm looking at the interior area okay well that just that one dark has given this forum quite a different appearance and movement than just a straightforward cylinder we look into the interior at work that seemed working that seemed especially down in the bottom and along that joint is really important to keep that piece together get further alteration I'm going to reach in there and kind of give it a belly the opposite direction of where it's going right now so I'm just reaching in here and pushing out trying to get that belly to come out and I'm using this this hard large rib and reach down in there see what I got getting some kind of form change and just a subtle change in form it's enough now we're thinking about how handle may jump off of here and come back down yeah I finished off these two cups from that one cylinder squared off the tops a little do some surface work on them and they'll be finished and you see these with some slip work on them here these are going to a wood kiln or so to kill but also sometimes I'll do glaze work so these are reduction and you can do it on much larger forms here's a larger tube that I'm rolling it on you can see how it's easier and a larger one to roll it like this just have just a right about maybe a quarter inch extra overlap there which is going to give me a little thickness in that seam area I can do some reductive work to get rid of it but as you see this pressure my hand on the inside of the two against the two edges of this slab this is where it's going to join it together that pressure alone sometimes is just enough I've got it on pretty much affixed from the top to the bottom here push down and roll okay this seems pretty fixed I paddled it slightly and paddle it a little more sometimes I paddle it towards itself and this is only if it's really right on if it overlaps a lot I don't worry about it and I just do some reductive and now fixing this surface I'm going to roll it off the canvas and get it onto a smooth surface and being in this - but I can get my arm in there I can just lift it up and put it anywhere I want so there is a back I'm having a hole in the tube sometimes and you can think about that when you're choosing your surface try and get this texture off of here these flexible rubber or plastic ribs I like a flexible metal rib for bigger ones and this could be as a straight edge on square objects - this little one that comes in all at Cheesie kits that you get works really well too so I'll use this everybody has that and I like to moisten it slightly I don't want it to drag and pull up too much clay I also don't really want to change the shape too much and I'm getting this surface off just by sledding saying it's sledding across the surface so sliding it across the surface on an angle I'm not going to use it upright like this to get a little gouge into it and this is compressing all that canvas texture off of there now another thing to think about is if you did clean this surface up you could then take it and roll it on to a composition that you've created out of different materials and it would then emboss that composition on the surface of this while it's still in the tube you can press against it I'll smooth out now this is what comes kind of a question of wetness and clay and girth or size of piece before I flip it up because down here if this at the bottom or this could eventually be the top - you could start on the top right away like seal it off if you want it to make an enclosed form but it can sag down there as soon as I take the form out so I'm going to gently get it on that angle and then I'm going to slowly put it up there and allow that to slide down it actually just got resisted from the paper and it's not even attached to the tube no this is where it comes in two questions that you I need to think about like I'm going to keep it round for instance I might just take the tube out of the paper nest enough to disturb its place it's sliding up and I've got it up the paper most of it came out with it quite often it gets hung up in there and if you take it out now you want to keep the integrity of that circle you could disturb it if you want to get it up right away you can put your finger in there and grab a piece of it and twist it don't just pull it straight up cuz it might be hung up somewhere so I got that out then I'm going to look at the seam and look at the integrity of that scene and I mean I know I fixed it on the outside I want to fix it in on the inside sometimes too so let me show you the overlap of that scene you look down in there the seam got fixed really well up here and down there there's a bit of an overlap that I'm gonna have to smear in towards the other side work that seemed fairly well smooth it out and I also went in the whole circumference of the tube and used a soft flexible rib and smooth out any little debts at the paper may have bunched up and put a dent in there now the options here are thinking about again keeping it in a cylindrical real straightforward form or manipulating that form if I'm going to manipulate the form stretching it outward or maybe pushing it inward might be a problem too but at least straight in outward I am gonna think about that seem so although I've made it go away I did make a mark there so I know where it is I'm gonna keep that mark in mind when I'm manipulating it I can put it into a square right now or any kind of shape basically but I'm gonna probably just show you a couple ways to push him push out play with the form you can also cut away areas of the form and then squeeze it back together a technique called darting and sewing is something to look into if you're interesting and pulling again on a cylindrical form but then doing some addition work utilizing hand built other hand building techniques to work in form on the surface of the piece easiest ways to work with slabs in some ways can be the hardest just working free without any moles without any templates or templates with this combination of this technique he's working really loose basically with a freshly rolling lab pretty loose slab here clean off the surface have it already and well this is a straight edge so I'm using this as a tool and I can just draw this through and get the bottom of this I'm going to do is just build a vertical form here do some basic cutting to alter it darting like I like I've talked about darting will be something that I'm going to use to alter it too but basically making the form and then doing some reductive work to alter the form in a variety of ways just to give you a few ideas I have a sense of what kind of circumference I'm going to get from this distance but I don't know exactly and you don't need to plan everything out exactly all the time you just go with the flow and again tools that are right next to you that have edges that you can use to try and get it close that's giving me some kind of starting point again I'm going to save these pieces for additive work again the bottom the top or other things I might do here so just it's a loose lab picking it up pretty gently and then giving it a curve I can think about this curve as far as maybe that's where I'm going to stop right there or maybe I'm going to pull it all the way around and attach it having some foresight and planning of course is always the best I think but you see the variety of things that could happen as you start thinking about it where it's going to go from here is going to be up to me I can have a large open forum that then I'm going to add a slab in between here or I can have this come in and close up on itself so since it's wet clay I'm just going to pinch that edge together and I can certainly go back on the interior I can add a coil to that I'm just going to play with it that way right now so I have this you know basic shape that's going on here you can see what's happening it's got a curve you see it from the bird's-eye view again this could be laid down I'm going to cut an angle off here there so I'm using these I'm trying to cut these out the same and I'm going to give it about an inch and a half between each one and after I cut these away I can then close this in on itself and I'll show you what I mean by it coming right onto the slab instead of overlapping or instead of coming point-to-point like that and obviously what's what's happened because I've taken that material way is I've made this opening smaller now and it's closing in on itself so I'm going to work these seams working rather quickly here using the clay at its at its wet wet stage or looser looser state certainly you can't do this at a leather hard stage I'm going to turn it work on this side now okay you're seeing that bird's-eye view again and seeing what's happening with these angles ISM I'm just smoothing them out settling that have yet to put any coils in there or close that area up with a slab on the bottom what I have here now is this this form that if I'm thinking about how these cuts have created those those kind of facets here I can also round those out I can paddle them out I'm gonna leave it there I like these facets they're working with the form I'm thinking about getting in and doing pushing out from the inside here to shape this a little and I'm thinking about how I'm gonna maybe cut away some of this and maybe add a slab still thinking about this possibly being the bottom of the piece too I'm going to score this right now get it get it kind of wet because it's drying out the edges I'm working really quick here straight from the slab I'm going to get in here and fill these areas in with coils fix those seams up really well because getting at them right now is a lot easier than putting my arm in from this side and then I'm going to flip it over and start working on the top got this bottom on there explored and slipped it on paddling to get that pressure not too hard because again it's pretty wet clay paddling around paddling around and then I'm gonna flip it over and I'm gonna cut around and cut this excess off again you think about that excess as part of the piece too if you possibly want to roll it up onto the piece to create a line that the clay itself of this slab actually kind of folds over and creates this foot under there I can think if I'm going to do this separate piece off of here as a foot that maybe comes out at maybe add some more stability than this smaller foot so there's variety things to think about here okay I've got this coil I'm going to lay down in there and with a brush not really my finger and then a longer brush I can get down in there and lay that into this seam here and I can push it where I want it with the brush just like with my finger and I'm gonna work that seam and fix that seam and reinforce it give it somewhat of a gusset in there it's not that big of a coil it's probably about the same diameter as this paintbrush here so it's not going to change too much on the top when you look at it from the top but it's important to fix your seams sometimes you can get away with just building and not having any problem with the cracking but I like to have this added step here just for some security yeah worked it pretty well I've got the seam in here I I'm going to finish up down here after it gets a little stiffer but I've cut most of that off I'm gonna work that seam or I've gone in with a pretty stiff paintbrush and worked that interior seam where it's joined we have to do a little bit more in there and now I'm thinking about how I'm gonna be maybe cutting away some from here got this real sharp point edge there and I've got this curve it still got that kind of shape but there is a coil that's fixing this scene I'm thinking about cutting away I could cut all the way into here cut down cut over at a slab that can play with that or I can dart it I'm gonna play with possibly a dark feather a feather shape or a leaf shape like that but probably from here to there to create some kind of concavity in this form right now I'm going to get in there with this flexible rib and start pushing out from the inside I'm going to do it very slowly little at a time again this slab is pretty much just freshly roll and as I stretch it sometimes there's little surface cracks that form and that depends on the quality of your slab it's clay it's stretching out slightly I'm gonna gonna either think about that texture is something that I like or I'm going to erase that texture later on but you can see in the profile here how it's creating this curve down here you're thinking about maybe another curve right here so a small one here and a little smaller one here I'm thinking about actually slumping the form that's gonna fit on top of here so there's a curve on top maybe cut an opening kind of handle and do a spout I worked a little two barrettes here and one here again I'm still gonna cut in here some way but first I want to do this for the top of it and pressure with this dry sponge to get a form that I can use as the top of the piece and I can connect this variety of manners demonstrate that was a stiffens up butt lift that out and you see that I now have this form that can then be attached lay that side I'm going to work on cutting through here and doing some negative space work in here for the handle to come in and have under this area visually balancing this area okay you see in this area I cut out already I didn't want to pull it up quite yet and I usually would of course work towards myself when I'm doing this and it's quite sticky even though I cut it out it still want to stay again now this is the area that I'm gonna seal up I can score and slip this and probably have a better joint there but again the clay is wet I'm going to start working down here first and I'm looking down on it from the inside here I'm slowly working it and pinching it like that we'll add a coil on the inside again even though I already had added a coil to this area now I'm going to add another one because I just cut it away but I'm gonna reinforce now this joint okay now you're seeing what's happening here with the back profile I'll fix this area up a little more and then I'll add this part to the top okay so I finished up really filling in coils where I need to smooth this out a lot I'm getting the point where I'm going to put this as a top form on top of this but before I do that I really want to be able to get this spout on I made a spout form that's kind of a frowny face on the top there a big smiley face there like a tongues pop I'm gonna go over this again here by just saying moisten my finger and round out that freshly cut edge because I don't want that sharp edge I also have a tapered it's a little thinner at the tip of the spout and it is back here where it's going to join to the piece I'll lay it up lay it up and maybe I even pinched this right now while it's still flat and getting gradated down to even a sharper spout right here I'm going to curl it up and I'm probably going to just leave this one open here okay I've scored cut out and scored this area also scored the spout here I'm doing a little bit more to make sure there's some slurry on there I'm gonna go back on here make sure this wet and then I'm gonna attach it yeah I've got this spot attached here and I have this part that has given me a line that's on the inside of this opening I'm going to cut this side of that line about the thickness of the clay and I'm going to score and I'm going to slip both sides this side and this top part this rim and I'm going to attach those forms all the time using this wet rib to really get that area that I'm trying to get back to a wet stage even though this is still pretty much not much more than 15 20 minutes past the time I rolled this original slab I'm still having that edge drying out on me and so I need to get it back to a wet stage I have this opening under here so I can't press too hard there but I can kind of pinch upward against it I'm getting this on here what I'm going to do now is I'm going to work this seam all the way around with slight pressure down again trying not to press too much as to collapse down on the foot because that's still pretty wet down here I'm able to gently battle that seam and now I have this top on at work that seemed pretty well and you can see how this is working from the bird's eye view I'm got a handle pulled and I'm thinking about where the opening for this forum is going to be to be able to fill it okay I had this hand already here and like I said that that point that teardrop shape there that's something you've seen in that think you have to think about how the handles going to go on there and I wouldn't just cut it straight so I have to think about that shape cut into the handle the handle wraps around it I'm also going to take and think about the angle I'm also going to take the knife on a certain angle when I cut this and if I cut under it is going to drop down if I cut on an angle this way it's going to actually spring off of the form and so I want to kind of spring off of the form so I'm going to cut like this for that reason you see what I mean by the angle there that's gonna allow it to attach to the form this way and spring off of it okay I'm dipping my rib in some slippy water and I decided I'm gonna place it below here so it springs up and then comes down to here and so I'm going to score that area get that left again this still is a pretty wet slab here it's not really leather hard so when I press into this slab I'm going to have to be careful so which is one of the reasons why the handle needs to be of a wetter state to can't really take a stiffer handle and attach it I'm going to take the handle part and I'm going to score that part get that ready even though the handle is plenty wet and I'm going to apply some pressure towards the pitcher here okay I've got the handle up here and now I have to think about where this opening is I stopped to work it a little bit but I have to treat this pretty carefully I thought it really worked the bottom too much but I'm going to work the bottom a little bit more and I am going to think about this opening here and the shape I want to cut out of here I'm going to use a exacto knife so I'm going to use this exactly I have to cut it out plan it out by thinking about the distance from here to here in the opening and I'm also thinking about how it's going to relate to the actual shape you don't want to have it drop in there they get to the end of it gently lift it out and then I do a little bit of fine-tuning on that so I look at that and I'm gonna play with that shape a little bit more I'm also going to get in here underneath this form and just fix that seem slightly I don't feel like I need to add a coil I paddled it pretty well but I'm gonna get in here with my finger primarily and just work that seam and I'm gonna look under there to make sure that it's all sealed up and looking fairly finished so my last step here is to work on the edges here like I said I don't really enjoy a freshly cut edge it's adds a sharpness that can chip and visually I don't like it either so I'm gonna play with that edge around that edge out and the piece will be ready for surface work relative to slips or glazes we'll probably use slurs on it okay I'm just using a damp sponge I don't want to use a sponge on this or some grog in this clay and I wouldn't just like sit there and sponge edges but just get them a little wet and then be able to use my finger I use a sponge what it does is it just takes those fine particles away and leaves kind of a coarse edge so just wetting it slightly so there's some lubrication for my fingers to manipulate those edges is one way that I play with getting rid of a freshly cut edge okay what I've tried to do with this demonstration is to show you how you can utilize slabs fresh off the slab roller off of your rolling pin in a way that there's a lot different than using mold using templates using templates with this technique also may help you visualize what a specific shape slab might do also you can cut profiles off of the slab that are relevant to the template that you cut and then it can actually dictate some of the shape that you get out of the slab so a picture like this is not so easily cleaned I can't get my hand down in there sometimes we sacrifice utility for aesthetic and this may be one of those cases to picture after I've done some slip work to it working on the surface later through the firing process may add more or obscure some of this too so here's a few more ideas to use slabs one other variation on working with loose slabs I like to call it the the PI shape taking up a very small piece of pie out of a circle you can bend it up and make a conical four and I'm going to demonstrate that utilizing that along with making tubes making other forms just with a free slab work it's a good way to play with forms that would go up and in or have it go down under finding an object that's already round is a good way to start out you can do this technique with other shapes too and I'll demonstrate what that looks like but I'm going to use this old CD cut around it and then as I said I'm gonna cut out a small piece of pie as if I was on a diet or something I'm gonna find the middle and to find the middle if you want to be really exact you can draw a line and try and dissect it and draw a line again and just kind of see if those pieces are equal distance you could even measure it if you want but to find the actual center of this that's one way if you want to be precise and I'm going to just go ahead and put my mark and cut right on that mark and I'm gonna start out by cutting a little at a time I know I can always cut a little way more I don't get the cone shape I want but just cutting out that small piece allows me to then bend this over and now I would then join that seam if I was happy with that cone and that would be one way to think about it it's a good way to make lids also not just parts to the the body of the piece but also other parts so so I'm gonna say I want it a little more drastic and I don't want to cut a whole quarter out just yet just so I can show you the difference so cutting out a little bit more and I may overlap that seen is showing you that peak on that cone if that's like a roof the peak of the roof is getting steeper and cut out just a little more shape so I'm going to cut out the full quarter of that pie and show you what happens then and this is almost like a martini glass looking at that kind of shape it's almost getting to that point bigger the cone of course that would actually fit into the the nice sized martini glass and of course the thickness of the clad probably use it a lot thinner if I was just going to use this as the drinking part of the vessel so I'm going to cut out just a little bit more just show you just going past that quarter point what happens then so that's just another maybe eighth of the pie and this is showing you that the steepness there of this cone so pretty simple idea again it goes back to paper templates and anything you could cut out of paper could sent then be translated into clay so instead of just playing with the clay if you want to repeat things over and over you could think about maybe a paper template instead of using a CD you could lay on our hard stock paper that might you know be able to be used over and over again and you could repeat this same cone over and over again okay so fixing that seam I have the options of overlapping it and just actually showing that seam or overlapping it and smoothing in that area some reductive work possibly I also have that option of bringing these disjoint together right where the slab is cut and so that's what I'm going to demonstrate I may have to add a coil a little bit but if that's going to be an interior seem to something that I was going to drink out of I might try and get it as close to possible without adding any change in thickness to the cone and I don't really want to manipulate this too much but I have to use some pressure after I've scored and slipped that area I have to use some pressure and it's going to manipulate it quite a bit but I can settle it down I can work it down with my fingers and smooth out that seam I'm going to close it in on the inside like I did on the outside and go back to that that one tool I like a lot is the stiff brush and it acts as an eraser down in like this point of the comb I can't get to but of course my fingers are going to be much better to use in some ways not using very much water at all and allowing them to be able to manipulate that clay and move that clay of course I can lay it against this table here and I can use the flatness of the table to also kind of remove this seam but further work the inside a little bit and try and have it flow there now it may not be a prop might not be a problem that you have you might think about that seam as part of the line in the piece okay I've lit it on the table here and I am going to work this seam now sometimes even rolling it might get that exterior scene to start to flatten out there and I can work it further with a rib or mine fettling knife so there you have it a real simple way to make a cone and you can be done on virtually any scale that you can handle and now I'm going to show you how to work with something that's not round and do a similar process this is an itching tool I'm going to use this to cut slabs got a blade on both sides here I can adjust it to the actual size of the slab I'm going to want and I can use it against a straight edge and get a pretty straight slab so I'm thinking off of this cone to actually have a cylinder come off of there maybe about three inches or so I'm gonna tighten that up I'm gonna use this straight edge now on the slab and draw this across but of course just kind of freehand it and just pull it that I make zigzag too much so this gives me that slab pretty instantly without having to measure it so that's the benefit of using a tool like that now of course just making marks on the clay and measuring out a distance you can also do the same this lip here and have this actually be the top of this cone off of the cone and this cylinder come off of there and have this as the lip to this I've got somewhat of an idea of the diameter I want by looking at the actual cone so I'm going to have that by me I'm going to take this and I'm going to roll it up have it more clay than I need but I'm going to take it up and I'm just going to roll it up into about that diameter that I'm gonna look for sometimes I can then hold it close to there and say I need a little tighter that say it's getting closer and now I'm gonna get a tool on the inside here cut against it on an angle so this angle here matches that angle there and I can fit that seam together yeah this tool I have it's just just a stick basically a piece of wood but it's got a little bit of a curvature on it so this is just a way that I can go ahead and cut this angle through both of these slabs and have something to kind of push against without manipulating the slab too much more so I'm not going to use that I'm not going to use that and when this now comes together that angle matches up pretty well there you see that yeah as I said about the diameter of the cone it matches up really well with this so now I'm going to score and get this kind of wet and then do the same to the scene get this seam together and I'm going to flip this over keeping this refined finished lip on the other side I'll be scoring down here and I'll join this piece to that okay we're finding the scene there's the seam right now what I've been doing here is I pushed it together from that side and from this side and then I got in with this again a curved piece and I used a fettling night and I worked that see my faddle dit up I fiddled it down and I also worked it horizontally so I'm going to work it a little bit more show you what I mean on an angle meaning I'm taking some of the clay from here with pressure moving it this way and then sometimes on angle that way this is one way to close up a seam that's tight like that using this on the inside of course I have something to press against working on the inside of the seem pretty much just drag this upward and so now you see the interior the seam there close to being finished the lip is the most important focal point on this and so I'll really work this lip a lot more and so I'm gonna work that lip just with my fingers really damp not really wet but damn fingers and so I'm gonna maybe use a sponge a little but I'm pretty much going to try and not use a sponge because I don't want any grog or heavier particles being brought to the lip where I'm gonna put my lip against so okay so I'll finish that off and one of the things I like to do is on the bottom is to actually take that area and spray maybe a plastic bat down and then run it on that area so that area stays wet while I'm working on another part so here you see what I mean by that I have some water there you see how I can do that it's another way to flatten an area out too if you're ever trying to get the bottom of something even you can do that eventually that slurry it starts flattening it out I did that with this part of the piece too to actually do that to flatten this area out more but it's also keeping that area where I'm going to join to that moist until I'm ready to do that okay a real simple way I'm thinking about making the stem by rolling the slab onto a dowel rod of course with something this big in diameter it could be actually a solid coil of clay however the structure of a solid coil compared to this the shrinkage sometimes cause cracks where you're joining it to the piece so I've rolled it up on there and I have this area here where it's now going to roll on to the existing clay here I'm gonna cut that to be just a little bit more than I need so it can overlap and then I can do some reductive work on that seam once I get that together now I can use the pressure of the dowel rod in there I don't want to get the doll rod stuck in there so I want to make sure that it's sliding in and out of that too while I'm doing that one way to do it is to actually use water on it make it really slippery on the interior this but I don't really want it to get wet I want to try and use it right off the bat so I'm just gonna take a dry wooden dowel and just keep turning it if it starts to stick then I just turn it slightly and it usually breaks itself free okay so now I have the dowel rod on the inside against that scene and I'm gonna push down on both ends of the doll rod and try and use pressure from the inside of this tube to seal that seam up there when I may sometimes get on top of it like this and take a small paddle and use some pretty strong pressure to get that seam together when you're paddling to play really manipulating those molecules and getting them tight on to one another all right obviously I don't need this long the length if I'm making a chalice or something I'm making some sculptural form with this then of course length of something that you play with maybe and so I'm just gonna sled across it with this just slowly get that honed up again making sure that that dowel rod is sliding all the time okay just for an example I'm thinking about how you have this straight forward - pretty simple good leave it like that or I found something that was in the shop here just cardboard you can think about finding other things that have texture on them and since there's a dowel rod in there I can feasibly roll this ond here and pick up that texture I can push against it and I'm creating instant texture on the surface of this so I'm going to play with that roll across it a couple times show you what that looks like of course if you roll it on an angle you're going to pull up some kind of linear quality that's gonna somewhat spiral up that form to since that's an area that's going to be held some surface tactile qualities to that can be nice to play with okay it's pretty easy to cut a form off like this you lay your knife on there and slowly cut like that it cuts it pretty even if you want it to use that technique on larger diameter cylinders with the same technique you could think about how that could be several different pieces or smaller diameter pieces if you wanted to use it for a variety of things not just the stem something you could feasibly just roll across it with your knife like that and that way I've cut off these one two three units here and you can measure it out and do that and stuff but since you have this dollar out on the inside it makes it pretty easy to cut against it alright the other thing that when you cut that way you get a pretty flat surface if you're careful you have then that piece being able to sit pretty firmly on a flat area you don't have to worry about having it higher over here and lower over there okay I have the form pretty much fixed up on the interior and the exterior and it's still upside down right now for me for this form but this possibly could be a way to make a jar you could cut off here make a flange on it cut it on an angle or do a puzzle kind of lid have a floor on it and call it a jar I'm going to go to this different step I've again made this part and that's going to go up here with this one I'm looking at this I've already these areas here and here are both scored and very moist to stick you even see that it left a lot of clay but that just marked that area so I really need to score really well here slip that up and I'm going to attach that form to that I just went back to that simple shape that cone shape and I've prepared that I've actually made it as a hollow object so of course the hollow objects going to need a hole so I'm gonna put the hole in and the hole is going to transfer to there which then I may choose to put a hole in the stem somewhere to allow the air out or I may put a hole in the bottom of this which I can then seal up later and see how I finished that part - it's a hollow object and again I said there's this hole I was going to either put it in here here that will be an area that will be glazed shut in the final firing so goblets are certainly challenging to make proportions are something that you play with sometimes the height of this can be a shorter or even taller the volume of this could be more playing with those elements it is very much like working with teapots and all the elements of the teapot alright so all the wet slab techniques that I just demonstrated can be used for so many different ideas that you might have from utilitarian directions to sculptural directions so now it's your time to have fun with it and just try it dive right in

Channel: gusstiffpottery

Views: 11,540

Rating: 4.859375 out of 5

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Id: Nrb04YxY_do

Length: 57min 52sec (3472 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 21 2020