Spheres

I created three spheres to familiarize myself with and practice the pinch technique. Each one demonstrates a specific characteristic — sgraffito, nature inspired, and manmade. I chose a desert scene for my nature inspired sphere, and a light bulb for the manmade sphere. By taking a chunk of clay and splitting it into two even sized pieces, I pinched both into semi-spheres, making sure to keep a consistent thickness of the walls and equal sized bowls. I then scratched the edges of the pots, applied slip, and pressed the two pots together. I blended the crack together using a scratching tool, then went over it with a smooth tool to seal the pots together. I repeated this process two more times to get three spheres. for the figures I wanted to add to my desert sphere, I flattened out a piece of clay, then cut out the shapes. I used scratch and slip to attach them to the sphere. for the lightbulb, I simply molded a small chunk of clay into a cylindrical shape and used a wood tool to carve a spiral into it, giving it a screw affect. Once the clay of my third sphere reached the consistency of leather, I used a coral colored underglaze. Once three layers were applied and dried, I used a carving tool to carve away the glaze, sometimes carving deeper into the clay to create my design. For the sgraffito, i decided to go with a design that comes up a lot in my doodles and art work. You can see this similar design in my coil and carve project. For the nature inspired sphere, I began with the sun because of my love for warm, sunny days. I then expanded from there with the cactus and scorpion to create a desert scene. I chose the lightbulb to symbolize industrialization, the industrial revolution was a major jump forward for the production of manmade things. I am most proud of the body of my spheres. They were properly shaped and the thickness was consistent. I struggled with figuring out a theme for my spheres. I overcame this by thinking about the things that I like and the first things that came to mind when I thought about what "man-made" means to me. If I were to revise this project I would put more care into it and finish glazing.