Welcome to Ceramics 2 projects!

Monster project

I chose this monster because I thought it was cool looking and I wanted to challenge myself with a snake like body,

I started out with a snake a snake like structure which I roughly rolled out some clay and kept adding on and shaping until it was my desired shape.

slowly I added individual parts of the monster. I started with shaping the pair of wings off of the body, and then attaching them to the monster

what went surprisingly well so I continued on with the teeth which were probably the most challenging part of this project since they're small and I have to fit them into the small mouth without damaging the ones that are already attached there.

finally and probably my most favorite part is the detailing of the small indents and scale-like details on the picture. I made small intense all along the back all the way to the tail.

underglazing the monster was fairly easy since it was mostly primary colors, the only challenge I had was getting the wings from all sides. I also added on the black tongue and made the eyes look better with under glaze. then I clear glazed the entire thing.

i feel fairly satisfied with how my project came out. I do wish I got a little bit more creative with it even though it matches the picture well and is pretty accurate, next time I want to add more detail and work into my monster.

Collaboration piece

For our collaboration piece with Miss Ruby's English class, I am collaborating with... We decided to design a beefy-looking cyclops. this character from The Odyssey is described as very big kind of mean and herding sheep and goats.

i thought this was cool because since I was working with a 15-year-old or 14-year-old boy it was a little bit hard for me to connect since we are from very different worlds. I think this project plan may get him more excited about the actual piece.

I started off with a human-like figure or outline of a human I made sure to make broad shoulders. Then I realized that it would be pretty hard to have the figure stand up by itself so I decided to have it stand on a platform instead. I also thought about the fact that having long limbs as the base would be hard as well so I decided to have the man only be visible from the knees up.

I decided to have Cliff like rocks surround the knees of the Cyclops to hide the fact that he doesn't actually have legs. this was really fun actually even though I thought it was going to be challenging because the texture of the cliffs.

next thing I did was add some rough detailing as far as the man's upper body muscles and head shape. after that pretty much everything was paying attention to detail, things like smoothing out the muscles and building on them smoothing out the cliff rocks and adding Pebble details to them, as well as facial detailing.

I added a leaf over the genital area since I didn't want to sculpt that and I feel that my collaboration partner did not want that scope either. I took inspiration from biblical painters.

Under glazing process made me nervous since it was a project I had been working on for a hot minute. Especially the skin color part was hard for me because I had to mix the glazes in order to make an appropriate skin color and I'm still not sure what it will look like after firing.

Sea collection

This project was inspired by my scuba certification course, I started making this because I was getting scuba certified currently and I remembered that I like the underwater world and what it has to offer so I decided I wanted some in my own home as well.

This shark is kind of an imaginary shark, I did it without a reference picture and I'm guessing that the anatomy is not correct. I drew some inspiration from the whale shark project I did during my Ceramics One class. I rolled out a piece of clay and built on to it more and more until it became a shark-like form and I scored and slipped on all the fins and used a needle and signing tool for the gills and eyes.

I added a sea star to my collection. I wanted to make it some cool colors, but I had used yellow, green, and blue for so many things already. I found it kind of like a classic and unoriginal colors to use, I decided to paint it purple and orange instead, which I am really excited to see how it turns out when I clear glaze it.

my next addition to the Sea collection was a manta ray, I had a really hard time making it right shape since there are so many different species but it is also a very well-rounded symmetrical and specific shape with a very specific curve it was super hard for me to feel like it looked like a manta ray. When I finally got to a result where I thought it looked as much like a manta ray as I was probably going to get it, I decided to underglaze it in a very intricate and nitpicky pattern, which was a bunch of very small circles. This was pretty challenging just because it was hard to keep the paintbrush clean as I was painting it, and also finding a paintbrush that could do a similar stroke every class I was continuing the project.

Next, I made a coral reef piece, which is actually probably my favorite piece this year or the semester, since it came out almost exactly how I imagined it. I just thought it was a very unique idea and also something that I can do again in different versions, formats, and colors.

The failure of this collection was my octopus, which I would try to make again maybe next year, because I think an octopus is an extremely cool and also something that you can make useful, for example, a ring holder on one of the tentacles, or a jewelry dish, or something.

The problem with the octopus was that it had very many long dainty limbs that kept drying out and cracking and I saw Caitlin make hers and I think I will do something similar next time where it is an octopus emerging from a pool or something like that so there is more support for the arm it's not just the octopus by itself and I also had a really hard time making the shape of the head.

jewlery dish

I started out making this as a jewelry dish that was supposed to be for my sister but since I made it right before spring break I couldn't add the detail I wanted to add to it while it was still wet enough so I had to go with the underglaze painting option to add some detail so I actually ended up with something completely different than I was planning out.

I was scared this color combo of different shades of pink and blue and white would come out to look a little too girly and chick but I actually really like it especially with the dot art and the shape of the petals they kind of remind me of fireworks especially with the dots.

I think I will definitely try something similar out with different colors at some point I'm actually sad that I didn't think of this earlier so I could paint it onto my platter with like all the glaze colors in the entire cabinet but I always have next year hopefully