Transcripts
1. Course Introduction and About Myself: Hi everyone, and welcome to today's pottery class. My name is Amanda Parker and we'll be covering the basics of pottery. I will be presented to you in the next lesson with a list of things that you need to get started. Just a few words about myself. I used to be an art gallery director and I used to sell art on cruise ships. I'm also a self-taught artist and I used to teach kids art lessons, which was a blast. So it's just a few words about me. I'll see you in the next lesson.
2. Preparation- What Materials You Will Need: Hi everyone. As promised, I'm back with a second lesson where I'll be covering the list of things you need to get started. Let's first of all, you need a healing board. And the reason you need this is because this board is specifically designed to cut on it, but not through it. Okay. And we'll be using this one for the clay. The second one is the ruling pen. The rolling pin is used basically to spread out the clay and to even it out. The third thing that you need is the utility knife. And you can actually use a metal wire if you have once you cut through it or just to cut the clay or you can just use this. But this is what I use general name because it's very easy for me to cut into smaller pieces. The phone brush is very important for varnishing. And the reason I recommend using a form brush is because I used for varnishing an actual paintbrush and this is what happened to it basically got destroyed. So now I have to throw away, I just kept it for this video is specifically to show you what can happen to it. So the foam brushes just throw away this you want to reuse. You need a paintbrush. It is not hardened already. And the paintbrush is actually very well. If you can find the paintbrush that is synthetic and not with natural hair, it actually is better for the clay and it goes through all the pores. And we will be used in this one to paint with acrylics. Because with the acrylics will be making different designs or you can just do one color on top and one color on the bottom. The varnish is at the end. Okay, so once the clay is dry and we'll be painting it once the acrylics or dry as well and will be varnishing. And this bowl I'm actually going to use because it has a really pretty design on the back. And I'll be using this. And the bowl will also be in the next lesson, we'll actually have this design on the inside, but I'll be using this to let it sit in and dry. And I actually have a possible here with some water in it because if you need to dump your hands or just dump though the clay, if it gets hard, you just use a little bit of water and it gets right back in it. And of course, a cloth that you'll be using just in case you want to clean your hands or you want to clean the surface. In the next lesson, I'll be showing you step-by-step how to make the actual bowl. So I'll see you there.
3. Making The Bowl - How To: Hi everyone, welcome back. So in this third lesson, as I mentioned, we'll be using air dry clay. So the air dry clay actually I prefer the Darwin kids one because it is actually very easy to, to mold. And I'll be showing you right now, this is actually how we get started. So as you can see, it's very white on the inside. And I prefer it this way because there are different types of air dry clays that are not white. They're kind of grayish and the surface is very rough. While this one is actually very smooth as you can see. So we'll be using this part here. And what you need to do is just get started on warming actually the material, okay. We just need to mold it in our hands for a little while. Okay. Until the material actually be the clay becomes actually very soft. And then I'll be using the rolling pin to start spreading it out. So what we wanna do is actually have a fixed surface, right? We don't want to have a thick layer, sorry. We don't want to have a very thin layers. So the thicker the layer, the easier it is to not break once it's dry. So if you'll look at it, it's kind of maybe like half a centimeter thick. I use the metric system, so I hope you're okay with that. So I basically turn it on both sides. And as I said, I'm going to be using the side of the bowl to make the design right? So I'll just be pressing it against it like this. And it doesn't matter if it's not smooth or you just want to have this design on the inside. This pattern actually. So once I've done that, I'm actually going to turn the bowl upside down based on actually. And it'll be just cutting and right around it. Okay. So we'll lift the bowl up. You just remove any excess clay that you don't need. Okay. What I do recommend before you set it in the bowl to dry, see, you have maybe some little cracks in here that you don't want to have. So you just take little bit of water, like I said, right. And you just smooth out the outside surface, right? Because once this dries, it just it's it's very rough and we don't want to have that. So we just smooth out outside surfaces. You can use a sponge as well. I've used this bunch before. Just use a simple kitchen sponge or you just use your fingers whenever you prefer. I still don't like this here. So we want to even that out there we go. Not all fixed, okay? If you consider that you still want to make more pattern on this thing and just keep rolling this bowl over it. Or if you have a different pattern, just use that. Okay. And then I'm just going to set it in there and let it dry. So we want to be careful and just set it on the side. So it actually becomes like sort of the same shape as the bowl. So once this dries, it will be exactly in this shape. For the next lesson where I'll be coming back with this exact same bowl that will be dry and I'll be showing you how to paint it and varnish it. And that's, that's it for now. I'll see you in the next lesson.
4. Painting The Bowl - How To.: Hi everyone and welcome back to the painting lessons. So as you can see, I already went ahead and painted the back of it because I wanted to be able to hold it and it's almost dry. It's actually dried to the hands. I can hold it and flip it around and I can show you how to do the insight. So I'm going to use this metallic blue that I just love. It's just a beautiful, beautiful color and it's a liquidity texture so I can actually swirl it around in here, okay. And I'm just amazed my brush and just paint the inside. Okay. The whole idea is to always make sure that all the ports are covered. Okay? So you can just do a different design, for example, I can do this and then mix it with another color. I can just do a full thing and then use some acrylic markers at the end that I have right here, for example, a few dominant, you can just use these. They have like sick points or ridge really send points if you want to do some writing or some scribbles in there and some middle ones. Okay, so what I'm gonna do just for the purpose of this video is just fully cover it. And make sure that you've covered the sides as well. Okay, the sides are very important to be covered because otherwise it will remain whites. But make sure you don't go over the line because otherwise we'll come on back. What I normally tend to do because I like a little bit of abstract design on my things, is after I'm done painting it and it's fully dry, which can take about an hour. So as you can see, I've got some excess painting here. I just pay back in there. There we go. As I like to use one of my code markers and just do some dots or lines just to make a prettier. Just going to take me a minute. So I'm wondering how yours went. How did everybody do it fully dry? This is still damp. See, there we go. And just make sure it's all in one direction. So look nice and pretty. Here we go. And just look out for any white spots if there are any spots that haven't been touched by pains me tray cover those as well. And if you want, you could actually do a little design on the back. So for example, you can just take this color and mix it on the back and just do some dots there too. If you want. Of course. There we go. It's pretty much covered all of it, as you can see. Here we go just a little bit more here. All right, All done. So this is the back of it. And this is the front, the inside of the bowl. And in the next lesson we'll be using the varnish to cover it all. And I'll see you there.
5. Fishing touches -Varnishing the bowl: Hi everyone and welcome back. As you can see, already lacquered the incisal, it's already furnished and dried. And now on the back, as I mentioned before, you can do a little bit of pattern if you want. So I did some polka dots because I lope over that. So I'm going to actually varnish the back of it. And that's about it. So I'm just going to go through it. Here we go. I just like to dab it straight from the bottle because I don't like to waste it. This particular varnish is quite toxic. So make sure that if you get one that is very stingy to the nose, you use a mask so it doesn't affect your breathing. You have some that are orderliness and got a water-based, and this is actually a varnish for metal or gold leaf. So Scott, this particular smell and I'm just like painting, just do the strokes in one direction. So we'll call even out. Here we go just shrink that everything is done in covered. That's pretty much it. So I hope everyone had fun. I hope you enjoyed all these little steps and guidance how to do home pottery with so air dry clay and hope to see you soon in a different lesson.
Samantha Parker
