Unit 1
Paperweight: face/ animal
Underglazed object
The first assignment was to create either a face or an animal as a paperweight. I decided to make the face of a panda bear because I like those animals, and I thought it would be a relatively easy project to start with for my first ceramics piece. The picture on the left was my inspiration, which I found on Google. I started by forming the head and then adding the ears, eyes, and nose by scratching both sides and slicking them together with water. I added a mouth and freckles by stitching them into the clay.
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When the panda bear was fired, I decided to underglaze it. Underglazing was another assignment, and I wanted to make my panda bear look more realistic, so I thought it was a good idea. I colored the face the way I wanted and didn’t just stick to my inspiration photo. I haven’t been able to put a clear glaze on my panda bear yet, but I plan to do that soon.
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I’m really happy with how my first project turned out, and I’m also pleased with the end result. I learned a lot, and next time I should probably smooth my object better before firing it.
Stamp
The second assignment for the first unit was to make a stamp that we could use to mark our future pieces. I wanted to create my initial and a dot. I didn’t want to use both of my initials due to the historical associations with those two letters.
I tried to form the stamp so I could hold it comfortably in my hand, and I didn’t want it to be too big.
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I messed up the most important part: I didn’t realize that when I used the stamp later, the letter would be reversed on the clay. I should have reversed the letter on the stamp so it would appear correctly when pressed into the clay. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t think about that, because now I can’t really use my stamp.
Even though I messed up that project, I still learned a lot from it. Next time, I’ll definitely think about reversing the design, and I also learned more about working with clay and cutting out shapes.