Day Two

Tuesday: I started the day at 9.30 with Patrice showing me how to use a machine to make the clay strips ready for students and myself to wedge. There was many steps I learned today in using this machine and hopefully in the weeks to come I will be able to perform this function on my own to help Patrice. After learning this I began to work on my own projects. Today my target was to work on my bowl making. This requires using a different technique to making vases or mugs as instead of doing a cylinder shape I had to move the clay outwards more to make that bowl like shape. When beginning to make my first bowl I struggled getting it centered and so after realizing I had to work on that I took a few moments to work on my centering. During this process I had Patrice giving me her input to give me pointers on centering. My first bowl was a salad bowl or cereal bowl. I was some what pleased with it as my first attempt in the bowl department and so while I was in the swing of things I continued to make bowls. My second bowl came out almost identical to the first one however being more centered I feel. I took time to center this one working on the motions of centering. Finally my last attempt in making a bowl did not work out well but I was able to cut it in half to see whether the clay distribution was even or not, telling me whether I had centered it or not. This took me to 12.30 where I then went to lunch. Later in the evening I came back to the ceramics room to trim my vases I made the previous day. This meant I went on to the wheel and used the tools to trim the bottom of them to make sure the were even and clean cut to make them presentable. After trimming both of the vases I placed them in the firing room to be fired.