Coil and Carve

For this project we had to make a pot out of coils or a coil and then afterwards, carve into it, making it unique and our own design. First, I got a fairly big chunk of clay and began to roll out a few long coils that were not too skinny, but like the with of a thumb. I decided to do it the way where you just wrap the coil around until it forms a pot/vase shape at the height that you want, opposed to making separate rings out of the coils and stacking those on top of one another. One coil was not long enough in order to have the right height so I attached the second coil using a serrated rib and water to do so. I knew the pattern I wanted to do immediately, but I usually draw it on paper, so I was not sure how well it would turn out. I carved out eye/leaf shapes into the pot and made them fairly deep and I was going to carve my pattern inside the leaf. I used a needle tool to carve the patterns, but it was too big so I switched to one of the small carving tools and used the side of it to be able to get in more details. When I finished I thought it looked too plain, and there were a few weird scratches and lumps I could not seem to fix so I decided it might look cool if I carved a bunch of lines and marks all over the pot. It did not look good at first, and I got nervous, but kept going and after awhile it started to look the way I had envisioned it. I did not get the chance to glaze this pot, but I would like to glaze it a deep purple and a blue and have the colors sort of mix together to add to the wavy effect of the design.