Make it with Clay: Beginning Pinch Pots | Anne Goodrich Hunter | Skillshare
Search

Playback Speed


  • 0.5x
  • 1x (Normal)
  • 1.25x
  • 1.5x
  • 2x

Make it with Clay: Beginning Pinch Pots

teacher avatar Anne Goodrich Hunter, Where Creativity Blossoms

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      3:06

    • 2.

      Lesson 1: Beginning Pinch Pots

      5:01

    • 3.

      Lesson 2: Pinch Pot Textures

      8:38

    • 4.

      Lesson 3: Pinch Pot Presentations: handles, pedestals and wall mount

      14:16

  • --
  • Beginner level
  • Intermediate level
  • Advanced level
  • All levels

Community Generated

The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

409

Students

1

Project

About This Class

In this class I'll teach you how to make pinch pots and then how to turn them into cups, bowls and wall sculptures. In addition, I'll show you three different ways to make textures in the clay. Pinch pots and textures are a great introduction to basic ceramics skills but they are also a great review for those who need a reboot or really want to make sure their basic skills are solid. 

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Anne Goodrich Hunter

Where Creativity Blossoms

Teacher

Hello, I'm Anne Goodrich Hunter; a ceramics based sculptor and art teacher. I'm here to share my love of art along with all my teaching experience with you.  

See full profile

Level: Beginner

Class Ratings

Expectations Met?
    Exceeded!
  • 0%
  • Yes
  • 0%
  • Somewhat
  • 0%
  • Not really
  • 0%

Why Join Skillshare?

Take award-winning Skillshare Original Classes

Each class has short lessons, hands-on projects

Your membership supports Skillshare teachers

Learn From Anywhere

Take classes on the go with the Skillshare app. Stream or download to watch on the plane, the subway, or wherever you learn best.

Transcripts

1. Introduction: way. Welcome to the tunnel art farm, where creativity blossoms. We found of the art farm on the belief that everybody is an artist in some way. But most people just haven't given themselves the time and the means to explore their artistic boys. Finding your voice begins with experimenting, playing, trying lots of different things. It's over the course of the next few years I'm gonna be building lots of different courses , But this was going to start with basic foundations of clay. I'm gonna introduce some creative thinking, but mostly I just really want to build your confidence in your ability to work with Clay by making basic cops, bulls and sculptures. I've got over 20 years teaching experience in public schools, colleges and community centers, so I'm really good at breaking down the basics for you. But I'm also gonna be able to show you what not to dio. Over the years, I've seen the common mistakes that students make over and over again, and I can help you avoid those. It makes being new. It's something just a little bit easier. I think this course you'll see me take a lot of inspiration from the farm I love the goats , the alpacas, the juniper trees of even the rocks here are interesting to me. But I want you to think about what's inspiring to you. What do you take notice off? One of the most important things that artists dio. They take the time to really look at things that other people take for granted. So what, you decided to take this course or not? I'm gonna give you an artistic challenge. I want you to go for a walk and try and find five interesting textures. Five colors, five interesting shapes. Reforms. You can just snap pictures on your camera and think of it is a little visual scavenger hunt . Now you don't have to be near nature to find inspiration. Try looking at the bottom of your shoe. Is there an interesting texture there Or when you go for a walk, do you find a beautiful gingko tree with bright yellow leaves? Texture, color shape? It's all around us. So how fun on your little visual scavenger hunt? So what do you think? Should we get started? Let's get started 2. Lesson 1: Beginning Pinch Pots: This is the first of a two part lesson in which I'm gonna teach you to make pinch pots. And then the second lesson, I'll show you how to make those pinch pots into bulls cups and sculptures from the tumble art farm. This is for Tadaa. She's gonna help us learn about clay today. One of the things that's so amazing about Clay is that it is elastic. You can just squish it with your bare hands. You can't do that with wood or metal. We can take your own little chicken foot. Bruce. A little prince right there into the clay. They're not a lot of materials you can do that with. So today we're gonna do project that exploits that elastic nature of the clay. We're gonna make some bowls with just our bare hands. We don't need any tools. We just play and our hands okay for tadaa. Thank you. So I stuffed my thumb into that ball of clay and I'm reaching my four fingers all the way down to the other side As I pinched the clay and rotated, I'm starting to make a bowl Now. In the beginning, I'm not going to try and make it too thin, too fast or it'll end up really lopsided. So notice they start from the bottom. As I wrote in around work towards the top, there's around one round two. I go all the way back to the bottom. Pinch and rotate, pinch and rotate. My hands. Get tired. I can switch him pension rotate. So this second round, I'm trying to make a thinner pot. Notice that the rim is the last thing I pinch all the rest the wall done. First round three. It's not so much about making it any thinner. I'm really gonna pay attention to where the areas are thick, where I feel thickness will pinch. But if I feel thin areas, I'll leave him alone. So its almost better. If you close your eyes during this last round, just pay attention to help where the clay feels thick versus then, so as you're finished pinching, you'll notice a fund should fingerprints. In your play, you take a wooden spoon and use it as a paddle. I don't have to kind of press in any lumpy spots. You know what else maggot you hard. It's just like a gentle kind of my black and I'm using the clay upside down because that wider base is gonna provide me a lot more stability than if I turn it over on the round edge. Now, a lot of people like to use water at this point to get a really, really smooth surface. I don't recommend that. Problem is, if you add too much water, your play becomes too loose. So think of like a stretched rubber band that's lost its bounced back. You want your clay is gonna start to want to fall apart later when we're closer to being done. If we want to add water to help smooth things out, we can do that right now, we're just coming roughly getting rid of our fingerprints, getting a reasonably smooth ball. Okay, If you're not gonna work on your pinch pots any more today than you want to wrap him up in a plastic bag, you can even kind of double stack something nice and stretchy. Not like a like a grocery store shopping bags or too thin stretchy garbage bags work really great. The reason is, if we let them completely dry out, we won't be able to put in tow. Be ableto you play once you're clears fully dry, it don't 3. Lesson 2: Pinch Pot Textures: gonna pick some grass. Not one of her taught of this feathers, but anything that you think has an interesting texture to it. So for our first texture, we're going to do something called impressed and then take these little wheat looking grasses. But start out gently pressing that into the clay. And then I can use my paddle to really make sure that it's in there and then as appeal these off. Well, now as when it was very simple. Just took a few seconds to Dio. I can keep going all the way around. I couldn't even reuse the same pieces. So that is called impressed, Texture. It's the easiest one. Now we're gonna do a little bit of additive texture. So let's say I want to do something. Well, I don't know a little more dramatic, So I'm gonna take a coil and then I'm gonna roll the end of it. So that's then and just make myself a bunch of spikes. You don't want to go off and make 100 spikes at one time, because by the time you get to putting him on your pot, they'll be old right out. So I would maybe do five or six at a time, and then a Let's say this is not gonna be a bull that I eat out. I'm gonna make this into a sculpture. So I'm gonna go ahead and slipped and score these right on to the top. Okay, So when we have clay, that's what we want to stick together. It's tempting to just kind of dab it on there and tell her, Say themselves, Great, It's stuck, I'm a magician. But as the clay shrinks, excuse me as a clay dries, it's gonna shrink and it's gonna pull away from each other, and it's been a full right off, so we've got to do a little more to make it happen. So right here I have KAL eight. That was too dry, but I broke it up and soaked it in water for a while. And then when I stir it, I get slip. I like to my slip to be about the consistency of a milkshake. Some people like it a little thinner, some a little thicker. I go for the milkshake and then I'm going to use. The survey did rib to score the bull where I want to add these, add some slip on and then I'm extra cautious. I find that a lot of times when people add slip, they end up smoothing it out too much. I'm gonna go back with my serrated rib one more time. Really. Make sure all those claim Allah grills are like standing up and intermingling and gonna want to work together when I put the two pieces together, then I can start grabbing some of my little spikes. Scratch slip, slip, scratch again. Don't be afraid to. That kind of put a little pressure behind it. And now that baby it's on there. It's on there pretty good. I want to go in further and really double. Be doubly. Be sure could take the end of a wooden tool and just kind of blend the edges so you can see additive texture. It takes quite a while, but it's worth it because it really pops out is super dramatic. Where some of those, um, impressed textures are a little more subtle. Third pot I actually made the other day, so it is what we call leather heart. It's still wet to the touch. It hasn't turned bone dry bone dries when it's completely dried out so I can do things like cut apart, put it back together. I can still slip in score on it, Um, has just the tiniest bit of elasticity left, but it's pretty firm. So this is the perfect stage at which to do your subtracted texture. Um, where we literally cut clay away. So if you're subtracted, a lot of people tend to want to just kind of draw in it. But I really haven't done enough. I haven't. First of all, it's so faint I could barely see it. By the time I put Glaze on that, it might disappear. Um, and so attractive really means to remove Clay. And I want you to do this. What should be bold, courageous. So I'm gonna use my little feather as kind of inspiration. And I might even start with the probe tool and sort of draw out what I want my father or my texture to look like. And I'm not getting too uppity about it. But then I'm gonna take a more dramatic tool and remove clay. So one of the reasons we wanted to be loved their heart is that little ribbon of clay came out nice and clean and easy, whereas if we do this when it's really soft, it tends to be mushy and you don't get a very clean design switch to a little bit smaller tool now. - So I'm not really trying to draw exactly the feather and more kind of trying to capture the essence of it, the feeling of movement and fuzziness the carpet pretty dramatically toward the middle and then feathers, although it also have a softness. So I'm gonna be more gentle out towards the edges down here. What's really busy? And then if I wait till this is even drier, it'll be easier to clean out what I call a little little burgers. Like all those little, um, kind of scraps of clay. I try to brush him, and now I might end up damaging that my design. But if I wait, I can brush that away 4. Lesson 3: Pinch Pot Presentations: handles, pedestals and wall mount: we have impressed, additive, and now subtract of textures. But so what? What do we do with these? I'm gonna show you some fun things that you can make your bowls your pinch pots into. Start with this guy cause it's the driest. And if I let this drought too much more, I'm not gonna be able to slip in score on it anymore. Well, first I noticed that my lip is not very even. And I could decide whether, like that or not. And in my case, I would like to trim it up of it. Um, so I'm gonna ground my fiddling knife, choke up on the knife. It's going to trim a little bit here, so that this top is more even, much better. And then, of course, we want around and smooth that out. I'm actually going to make this into a little miniature teacup little espresso cup. Really? And so I want the lip to feel good against mine. This is called a lip. It's gonna touch my lips. I want to feel good. We want kissable pottery here. Yeah, obviously my cups not going to stand up very well like that. So take a little bit of soft clay. A lot of oil simply make a circle out of it. - And then again, - and then if I feel like that lip is too fat, I can pinch it out. It's not a leopard's foot making it will thinner on taller. It becomes a little bit more like a pedestal foot. No, I know. I want to make a little handle for my cup. A little bit of clay Rule it out and I'm just gonna you can get a rolling pin. But I'm just gonna kind of had it with my palm of my hand and smooth it out. I want to look at my proportions knowing that the clay's gonna shrink. How big do I want one finger to figure how big joining that handle to be? I'm gonna trim off just a little bit of the top here, - So I've got a sweet little cup and then let's assume we want to make this one into a bowl again. That lit bothers me. You can see that I'm struggling a little bit more to trim this one, because this one, it's still really wet. Whereas this one's almost leather hard. - Who ? - Okay , So we've made a cop that dysfunctional Aiken sit my espresso out of this little bowl. I can keep this for my pennies. Now, I want you. I want to show you how to make something that is not functional but sculptural. So use a rolling pin and I just rolled out a little bit of slab claim, and I'm just gonna make it. I don't know about the thickness. A little less of my pinky nail, um, and make it bigger and wider than I think I'm gonna need it because that just makes it easier for me. Oh, to deal with what I'm gonna do. My goal is to make a back for this piece so that I can then hang it on the wall. And now, when I Now that I'm ready. And I know exactly the size and shape that I want to cut this, I'm going to cut just a little bit of a margin. Look it. This is a really bad angle. Let's try from we're here. And that little margin gives me some clay to blend up, so I can really make sure they're stuck together. And like most things with clay, it starts out looking really rough from kind of like we're messing with it up. Don't worry. We'll come back and smooth all that out. Right now, our goal is to make sure that it's stuck together. So this is called sewing, where I'm Dragon Clay for one piece of clay to another in order kind of close up that seem . And sometimes I'll go back the opposite direction. I think for this we're in pretty good shape and I like to take my peddling knife. And I might even find that I want to trim a little little bit of that away. It's a constant process of blending and then kind of refining and going over again and again until you're really happy with your seems, huh? So now I'm gonna thinking this is going to go on a wall. So this is the perspective that people are gonna view. It kind of almost looks like a cool flower. So I've gone ahead and made some channels so I can keep going with my sculpture. Sometimes it's nice to have a new idea ahead of time, and sometimes it's nice to just see what kind of comes out of your psyche. I've got a bunch of sunflowers. I just trimmed up. We're getting ready for winter here. So all my sunflowers were starting to look pretty pretty sad, so I thought I'd make one that will last all season, all of the seasons. - Now , when I put that on the wall, that's the perspective that people are going to see. So I'm gonna finish smoothing and blending. And then when I'm already we're gonna kind of decided, What do I want the top to be? I really like this longer pedal to be towards the bottom. So that means I'm gonna have the top of my flower here. So I flip that over in about 2/3 of the way up. You're simply going to drill the whole with your fiddling knife. And this whole serves two purposes. One, it keeps air and water from being trapped inside, which would make our peace explode in the kill. And to after this is fired, we can put a nail on the wall and use that to anchor this to the wall.