Okay, here we go again.
I'm still on this space kick, sort of doing some futuristic interpretations of teapots in low gravity.
Or something like that.
The round forms just seem to say space vehicles, at least for now.
Once I get going on some designs, it's sort of hard to stop until all the ideas have been exhausted.
Or I get bored with doing them.
Like I got with those UFO teapots.
I still got some ideas for them, but I tend to move on to other things quickly and save some stuff to revisit.
I don't usually sketch stuff out though that's what they teach you in art school.
The only time I put stuff on paper is so that I don't forget what I was thinking about since my brain tends keep going and sometimes I leave stuff behind.
If you know what I mean.
Anyways, here's the sketches of I did of the stuff I'm working on now:
I don't usually go into details, I just do rough ideas for the shapes don't always work out like I would like them to and I do a lot of improvising.
I will do details on new stuff again, so that I don't forget.
As you can see, these will have tractor like feets, treads on wheels.
I only did a little sketch of what I wanted to do for I'm sure the clay is going to limit me a bit or stuff will take too much time and in the end won't be worth it.
The thingy in the top sketch should be easy.
One single track for the foot with a lamp like extension attached to the bottom of the pot.
Here's the pot and the lid I made:
I decided to add a raised section in the middle instead of adding a band later. I also cut a couple of grooves to sort of highlight the area.
The lid didn't work out so good.
I wanted something tall, to sort of offset the shorter round section.
I was thinking conning tower here, like a submarine.
The lid I made didn't fit and I made an error when I tried to correct it.
Sort of glad I did for the lid was heavy and didn't really float my boat.
Unfortunately, I'm left with the same diameter hole on top, so any lid I do now will have to fit that space.
Most likely a shorter lid, but I think I'll try a tall one again maybe with a round section on top, to sort of match the bottom.
I usually throw my lids upside down and trim the tops, that way I can make sure the lids fit the openings.
I'll show you how the lid came out next time, even though I won't be using it.
Now for the thingy in the bottom sketch, I had to get creative.
Okay, not really.
I wanted something triangular, just to get around the well, roundness of stuff on the wheel.
Altering stuff is usually not my forte, but throwing and altering it is way more easy than handbuilding it from slabs.
Bottle shapes are my thing, I like the tall slender look with the narrow necks.
Most of my bottle forms are non functional mainly because you can't really stick anything in them except for maybe a single bud.
So I've taken to calling them bud vases.
Necking them down is the hard part, at least for most potters, but I sort have a nack for it so I can do them fairly quickly.
This form called for a narrow neck and fairly wide bottom.
I was going to close off the top, not even have the skinny part, but I decided to leave it open and keep the narrow neck.
So, the bottle form and the squish:
The idea is to get two even surfaces by using two flat thingys to do your squishing with.
I usually put a center level on the top board, just so I know things are even and flat, but for this I just eyeballed it.
The lid again was thrown upside down and trimmed to round off the top:
Now to make the puka on the top the squished thingy, I had to do some hand excavations.
The original idea was to center the squished thingy on the wheel and trim out a hole so it was perfectly round.
The top surface is a bit contoured though, so that didn't work.
In the end I just traced the outline of the lid and cut it out with and Xacto knife.
Not a perfect circle, but the rim on the lid will hide the imperfections.
Theres still some fit issues, but I'll work the lid and hopefully it won't be too bad.
Okay, stuff is taking shape!
I'll keep spraying this stuff down with water and keep it workable until well, I get to work on it again.
The tracks may need some sketching out though I'm pretty sure I know how I'm going to execute them.
Again, I sketch mainly so that I don't forget stuff that rambles through my brain.
Lemme tell you, sometimes that stuff rambles pretty darn fast.
I visualize my work in my head pretty well, close to how they actually come out.
I have ideas for three forms, but I can only work on two at a time, three is just too much.
I want to do six forms total, three in one glaze pattern and three in another, sort of like two matching groups.
More on this later.
