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Total Beginner Fascinated With This Effect


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Thanks a lot for the quick replies.

 

It's a very nice technique indeed...maybe I can use some of my cake design skills for pottery as well.

Now..would you add the bulgy dots while the main body of clay (in this case the mug) is still soft or does it

have to be leather hard? any recommendations?

 

thanks

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Thanks a lot for the quick replies.

 

It's a very nice technique indeed...maybe I can use some of my cake design skills for pottery as well.

Now..would you add the bulgy dots while the main body of clay (in this case the mug) is still soft or does it

have to be leather hard? any recommendations?

 

thanks

 

If you go on Periscope, Symmetrical Pottery broadcasts there sometimes. They are the artists who make these cups. 

 

In my personal opinion, it is all done with slip trailing. In the case of the largest thickest spikes my guess would be extremely thick slip in an applicator with a large nozzle. 

 

I definitely think that cake decorating skills will carry over to slip trailing! Another potter that uses cake decorating on their pottery is jampdx. They have a great Instagram account and they are also active on Periscope. 

 

I do a lot of slip trailing and in my experience the piece needs to be dry enough that is firm and does not distort with handling, but damp enough that the slip bonds properly with the piece and becomes one with it as it dries. If the piece has started to turn "white" with dryness when you slip trail, often the slip designs will flake or crack off either before or after firing. 

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last semester i did a lot of slip trailing. we had two kind of slip. one esp. designed to create high surfaces (so darvant and less water) and the other to be brushed on so too liquid to slip trail. 

 

i've found the wetter the better bonding especially for dots. our school's glaze trailing formula does not stick well to dry leather hard, or very wet clay too where it takes in the water from the clay body and kinda runs or 'melts'. so i slip trail the moment the shiny surface of a wet pot disappears. 

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It's done by building up the surface with texture and a fluid transparent glaze that slightly breaks.  In this case the texture seems to be done with a slip trailer, baby snot bulb syringe, or a syringe of some sort.  heck, you could do it with dipping a brush in slip if you wanted to.

 

Anyways, slip is liquid clay - so if you're putting clay on clay, it needs to be similar wetness in order to achieve the best bond as they'll dry and shrink together.  If it's not, they'll dry and shrink apart, making the dots fall off.  This is pretty much the same concept if you wanted to add say a handle to a cup.  So in other words, do it when it's wet clay, before leather hard.  The thicker the slip, the wetter the clay has to be.  You CAN apply slip to bone-dry ceramics, it just needs to be watered down...but then you have the issue of more water being introduced to a bone-dry piece...which has its own set of awesome problems :)

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that kind of raised slipware is made with a special slip recipe so that the slip wont be flat. the dots are made with a slip trailer bottle - either the metal nose bottle or just a hair dye bottle. the snot bottle makes tear drop shapes. i wonder if the big ones are sprigs/mold. 

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barbottina, it is nice to have a new person ask a question that shows a direction they want to take.  while you are experimenting with slip and application of slip to achieve this effect, try a few other experiments as you work.  you only learn by trying with your own clay, your own slip, your own firing.  the results are education. 

 

one thing you should start out with is a notebook.  a real, paper and pen notebook with dates, expectations, what you actually did and the results after firing.  photos are a wonderful way to document what is happening so a shot of what you start with, progress as it develops and a final result are helpful for a very long time.  there may be some other thing you want to work on and someday you will come back to this and be thankful that you kept the notes.

 

while you are experimenting, try this.  set aside a piece of clay after scratching a line into it and let it dry.  once it is totally dry, break off a small piece and look at it.  notice everything you can see and write it down in your notebook with the name of the clay and the date.  then the shocker.   dip it into a container of water.  do it quickly.  wait a minute and break a piece off.  notice how very little of the clay actually got wet.  then dip the same piece into the water again.  continue noting the results.  at some point, the clay will finally become saturated and not survive intact when dipped.  i am trying to tell you that clay goes through lots of stages and many people are terrified to get a dry piece of clay wet because they think it will fall apart immediately.  

 

so, once you know what you CAN do, try things you have been told "won't work".  neither the words "working with clay" nor "playing with clay" are a perfect description of what you will be doing.  have fun

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