The third day of the pottery workshop saw an increase in the number of attendees. By the end of the session there were eleven participants, including one boy. Teaching the newbies meant of course that I had to go through the techniques I had taught over the past two days....no problem...great for those who were there from day one...i.e. if they are paying attention.
I decided to start the session with having them draw a landscape from there memory....I did a quick drawing of my own somewhat childhood drawing of a landscape. That exercise was very interesting. I also gave them colored pencils so that they can begin to get comfortable with the use of color on their drawings. At the end of the exercise, I told them about my drawing and also looked at what I felt and why I think I put certain design elements came out in the drawing. I then allowed them to tell me, one by one, about the piece they created. They were shy and most were comfortable with a brief explanation....I then told them what I saw. I was in fact amazed at how much I was able to see and they too didn't realize that they were able to create and tell so much about themselves and their home through a drawing. This exercise proved that we can all tap that creative person that dwells within.
After the drawing exercise we had a snack break. For the rest of the mornings session, I showed the participants how to clean and smooth out the pieces they had made on previous days. The pieces were at the leather-hard stage which was ideal for scraping and cleaning the pieces. Of course some wanted to do their own thing and just use water to smooth out the piece....one of them ended up burnishing rather than scrapping......to burnish a piece, is to smooth it using a tool and a movement along the pot, to seal the surface thus producing a high shine! This particular participant did that without knowing that this was actually a technique. A good discovery for her. While they all worked on their pieces, I went through the techniques of clay preparation, wedging, making a pinch pot and addition of coils to grow the piece. One of the new girls, Tatianna,(I am learning the names now) a very vocal young lady, decided since she couldn't grasp the concept, went ahead and used a rolling pin and made a Japanese vase. At the time, I was helping some other girls (the boy is very quiet and works well, while the girls chat about every thing) when suddenly I heard Tatianna praise herself for creating a piece. I looked up and saw a crudely done Japanese vase, which I am sure she had no idea about. I asked her how she achieved that and she told me. This young lady had jumped ahead of me and gone on to do the slab technique without being taught. Since this wasn't my next planned activity there wasn't enough rolling pins. I had planned the production of another piece of pottery but decided to showed them a technique for creating a slab without the use of a rolling pin, instead. I then showed them that again, you have to score when attaching pieces of clay. By the end of the class, they all had variations of the vase, using the slab technique! I told Miss Tatianna to take clay home and return with the pieces she was supposed to make using the pinch and coil methods...lol!
Lunch arrived just as we were cleaning up....thus ended another day....thank God it was Friday!
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