Art,  Pottery

Pottery Wheel

So, I took a pottery class a little while ago,  and this was my very first attempt at the pottery wheel.  I’ve been meaning to attempt the wheel for over a decade now but I never managed to get around to it.  I’ve finally had the chance/time to try the wheel out and I have a love/hate relationship with it.  I think that, because I do so many different artsy craftsy things, I expected myself to be able to pick up on pottery fairly quickly, but I couldn’t have been more  wrong.  For me, it was much harder than the instructor made it look.  I think it took me 4 whole 3-hour long classes to semi-get what the instructor showed us in the first 20 minutes.

The first few pieces turned outquite lopsided and crooked but I’d like to think that these imperfections give them character.   This first little piece I use to hold my keys in.

If anything art related can teach me a bit of patience I think that  it would have to be throwing on the wheel.  The fine balance of the speed of the wheel, the amount of pressure you apply to the clay, the amount of water, how fast/slow you touch and stop touching the clay requires a LOT of patience.  More than a few times I got frustrated and broke whatever I was trying to make.  Many times the bowl or vase would get thrown off center or just collapse altogether or a piece that was meant to be a cup would magically turn into a bowl and vice versa.  I think by the end of the 22 hours of class sessions I was finally starting to get the hang of it though.  ​
I will most definitely be taking another pottery class, actually I will be taking this exact same beginners class all over again before moving on to a higher level.  Now that I have a better grasp on some techniques, I just need to think of what I’d actually like to make instead of letting the clay turn into whatever it turns in to on it’s own.  ​