Spheres

This was our first full project for ceramics. for this project we took 2 pinch pots and joined them turning it into 3 separate spheres of different sizes. we then took these 3 separate spheres and made them into inspired spheres, one natural, one man made and one sgraffito. for my natural sphere, I created leaves and slip and scored them onto my sphere. For my man made sphere I cut a slit in my sphere and inserted a knife, I had crafted out of clay. this ended up being my favorite one. and for the sgraffito sphere, I etched a design around the whole object.

I decided on these different designs because the nature-inspired design would let me get a feel for the clay and how to slip and score designs together. this would translate into helping me build my man made inspired sphere. that I made because I thought it would look cool. The sgraffito Sphere was made because I had a design on paper that I wanted to see if I could transfer onto the sphere.

To make these spheres we started with two pinch pots. we then slip and scored these 6 pots together into 3 full spheres. to put the knife and leaves onto my first two spheres we used the slip and score technique and cut out the designs on a thrown piece of clay.

After I had the shape I wanted I then let the clay dry. After they all dried I put the nature and man-made inspired spheres into bisk firing. and painted on 3 coats of underglaze and scratched my design into the sphere. and then that sphere went into the bisk firing.

after bisk firing, I painted colored glazes onto the first two spheres. and a clear glaze on my sgraffito sphere. they were then fired for the final time.

Overall these projects came out OK. not perfect but this was expected because I had not worked with clay for so long. next time I definitely want to spend more time with the glazes, my glazes were not perfect and this detracted from the final look.