#pottery technique

[jbbartram-illu]

Oh hey, the rest of the snats/slats (snailcats/slugcats)! These guys are sgraffito'd with some celadon glazes slapped on top for a jewel-like & slightly slimy effect!

Also, I've started to upload previews to my shop (heywitch dot bigcartel dot com) & am going to be opening it up next week...I'll decide on a date/time tomorrow & announce it as soon as I've made up my dang mind!

[claypigeonpottery]

a little tutorial

[stardatez3ro]

woe. another android oc be upon ye

i might b writing smthn with them n 3 other ocs ive posted about (t'iara, sorn and radar) so uh .yeah .looks around

(click on the img for better quality :P)

[alatar-and-pallando]

I'm so obsessed with my latest mug -- I think I've spent 6 hours on it so far? I even put a secret beetle on the bottom. May the kiln gods have mercy on my soul

[boneswizard]

straight up watching dad level youtube videos

[main-clown]

Guess who just watched a video essay and is ready to ramble. Haha me.

Anyway, Lord of the Rings. I really really love how, in the movies (from what I interpret it as), that orcs are borne from mud. The pure ideas that flow through my thinker just AGH

Orcs borne from mud and clay is hella cool, not just from design aspect but for how it can be changed for differing worlds. I’m tired of orcs just being “we are evil stereotypes ooga booga”. They can represent the “less beautiful” parts of Mother Nature, or even “corrupted” nature that didn’t have a choice in their fate. From what I know, elves and orcs are pretty similar in LoTR and RoP. RoP have younger orcs being paler, which is weird because LoTR has the “orc manufacturing process” happening that has darker orcs coming out. I like the idea of orcs brightening as they age, like stone firing a pot. Even when firing a pot, its very rare to get clay that’s white. You need high amounts of kaolin clay, and even then its kind of pink-ish? Until you glaze it. So terracotta colors or greys. Orcs already have face paints they use, which can easily be changed to be like glazes.

Orcs with hand painted flowers like traditional porcelain. Orcs with feather patterns like Indigenous potting techniques. The gold mending pots from Japan(?). Orcs having web scars like cracked plates. Orc parents literally sculpting their child.

I don’t have orcs in my world, but the shit they can do with orcs just on the basis they’re from mud is endless. And goddamn.

Heads Up: I have never watched Rings of Power so all I know is very scuffed. Last time I fully watched LoTR was years ago, so this is mostly by memory.

[whereishermes]

The Art of Greek Vase Painting

Greek vases and pottery was well-known for its quality and was widely exported throughout the Mediterranean. The techniques used by ancient Greek ceramists required thorough shaping and decorating processes that were the result of years of training under master potters.  The Vase – Making Process: From Clay to Form The techniques Greek ceramists used to shape and decorate fine vases required…

[kiya4328nn]

Arts and Cafts Classes in Gundagai

Unleash your creativity with our Arts and Crafts Classes in Australia. From painting to pottery, Kiya Learning courses celebrate artistic expression in all its forms. Discover new techniques, explore diverse mediums.

[artisticdivasworld]

The Artistic Soul of Clay: Why Pottery is Celebrated as an Art Form

This post is about pottery. We are in a series about the various art forms that you may or may not consider to be part of art.  We have talked about Mexican Folk Art, and we have talked about Japanese Kintsugi, and we just talked about street art murals as an art form.  You can check each of those posts out if you missed them. There are many who do not consider pottery to be an art form.  The…

[jbbartram-illu]

I'm one step closer to a shop update! I took all the photos today & just need to spiff 'em up a bit (aka photo edit) before I start uploading listings to the shop. Here are some shots of the big Bird Ladies while I work on that fiddly bit.

Stay tuned for an announcement soon!!

[claypigeonpottery]

sold

another older piece. a commissioned copy of one of my mugs

[floraleevee]

Roommates put on a pottery show right after my Ritalin kicked in, so instead of job/apartment hunting I’ve now successfully spent the past 4 hours judging 9 people for a craft I’ve never participated in

[dokyeomini]

yk what my actual dream is. to be a craftsperson

[ornamentodeux]

Looking for Inspiration

I’m back in the pottery studio this week. I plan to revisit the tar paper technique for hand building. Preferably with some interesting surface designs. Here are some pictures of a vase in progress.

[hellenhighwater]

Have you taken any pottery classes or were you entirely self taught? I REALLY want to get into it but classes are quite expensive

I took some sculpting in undergrad, but it was in the context of casting and mold-making, not ceramics. So I'm fairly comfortable with clay as a medium but not so much with clay as an end product--not being able to do armatures and having to think about firing is weird. (If I had the opportunity to do bronze casting again, though, I would, no hesitation.) That puts me in the minority of my current pottery peers, who are largely self-taught or only learned in our studio.

I do pottery now at a co-op studio space, and technically that means that I'm taking classes there--but the classes are more like guided lab time? There's not really assignments or anything, and there's only a couple other people who sculpt, none of whom are in my class. Mostly the class just means that the person in charge demonstrates a technique or two once a week and then lets us do our thing.

Personally I think that shared studio space is the absolute best way to go. You spend less in startup costs (kilns are EXPENSIVE, running kilns is expensive, glaze is expensive) and it plugs you directly in to a group of fellow artists who can help and support you at whatever skill level you're at. Yes, classes are expensive--my class is $250 per season. But for me that includes lab space, 50 lbs of clay per season, almost all of the glaze I use, kiln time, and other people doing all the maintenance and kiln loading/unloading etc. Very much money well spent.

Artist-run shared spaces are often not turning a profit on anything with studio fees, just covering operations costs, so while it's pricey, it generally is just...what it costs to do that hobby. And it is sooooo much easier to be motivated when you're going to what is, basically, Grown-Up Art Club.

But if costs are prohibitive for you to do pottery via classes, and you want to learn to sculpt, then get some polymer clay and see what you can do. It's a different game than actual clay, but form is form, and the medium is secondary to figuring out how to translate an idea into reality.

Polymer clay is relatively affordable and doesn't require nearly the infrastructure of ceramics. If you can't spend the money on classes or a shared studio, then polymer clay is a great way to develop technique and an eye so that when you're in a position to spend the money, you already have the skills to make it worth what you're spending.

[cecilioque]

Adaman the Symbol of Time

 p(An Analysis on the character design of Adaman from Pokemon Legends of Arceus and it’s relation to time and art history.)

A lot of the characters form PLA are similar in terms of design. The characters that do not follow the standard hoodies, tunics, guild jumpsuits ,and kimonos have a lot of interesting art history associated with them.  I love Adaman’s design in particular since he is literally a symbol of time. 

Well...isn’t this obvious since he is the Diamond Clan leader and associated with Dialga? Yes, but there is a lot more subtle aspects to his design that link him with a specific form or Japanese Art.  But let’s first look at the obvious references to Dialga .

In Adaman’s design they use a lot of blues and and silver that you can see shared with Dialga.  They also use the Diamond clan symbol that is shaped to look like Dialga’s chest gem repeatedly in the coat and accessories.  Adaman’s coat/jacket is most likely a nod to the Japanese Haori.  It is even tied with a fancy beaded Himo chord to keep it closed. If you look at the shoes you can see in the concept art that even the bottom of them are supposed to look like Dialga’s feet in their regular form and on the top of the shoe like the legendary Pokemon’s face.  All this information is very interesting and nice seeing how the character and the Pokemon are related even thematically.  

However, it’s crossed your mind (even briefly) that Adaman’s design is not directly one to one with Dialga. He isn’t a Dialga gijinka. There are elements and colors that Adaman uses that the legendary Pokemon does not.  We can brush it off as Adaman having a flair and his importance as a Diamond Clan leader to set him apart. But this is where it gets interesting. His outfit is generally just fashionable and we can choose to look at it like that on a surface level.  But if you look deeper you see a more symbolic meaning.

Adaman is Kintsugi . What is that? Kintsugi is a Japanese art technique that repairs pottery using lacquer and gold dust.  Adaman also has similar gold veins running through his clothing.  For someone who is so “put together” looking, why would you intentionally create jagged and uneven elements other than for aesthetic? This is because for my understanding, this is yet another way the character designer chose to express Adaman’s connection to time.

Kintsugi is a beautiful form of art and philosophy.  The idea is not to hide the cracks and flaws, but to turn it into something more beautiful and strong.  It represents the passage of time and a documentation of the harsh conditions in which we pass through. But ultimately it is a celebration of survival and growth.  It is also a metaphor for embracing your flaws and imperfections.

One translation defines the word  kintsugi as golden “golden seams”. So, Adaman is kind of a symbol of kintsugi pottery and philosophy.  The part about this design that confused me the most was his hair since it’s also not standard colored and is quite unique. But I realized that if we are equating him to pottery, the hair might be colored that way to imitate pottery glazes (the stuff they put on ceramics to give it color.)

On another interesting note, Adaman has lots of signs of past injury. We see this with the bandages on his arms and hands, the cut brow which is a remnant of injury and survival, and then the very intentional jagged gold claw marks on his back.  The back gold lines are sharp looking and contrast with the rest of the designs which is fluid and rounded.  It’s bringing attention to the marks.

Image sources: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

We can interpret a lot from this design. It also raises many questions. The jagged golden marks and Adaman’s bandaged arms implies that he has been “damaged” or “broken” in some sense. This could be taken literally or symbolically. We don’t know what happened to him.  Maybe he was attacked by an alpha Pokemon and survived a severe injury that he now incorporates into this aesthetic as a way to show that he was able to come back from that.  Or maybe it’s referring to his leadership as a young Diamond Clan leader and the mistakes he made and had to learn from. 

So in conclusion. From what I can understand , if we were to wrap up all the motifs, Adaman’s design ultimately seems to just represent a passage of time. Breakage and repair are just proof of time passing and represent history and life. And I think that is really cool.  

These are all my speculations and none of it is canon you can disagree if you want. These are just things I have observed and made note of that I believe makes the character far more interesting and fleshed out.  There is a lot of deep and meaningful things you can pull from this if you want to expound further through fanart and fanfic.  

EDITS/NOTES:

So a lot of people asked if the arm and hand wraps are for fighting. They aren’t. In every form of fighting and martial arts that involves wrapping(taping) your knuckles, you wrap between each finger and around your knuckles several times to cushion them.  You do their for wrist stability, prevent injury, and joint restriction.  Failing to wrap your hands correctly will result in fractures, broken fingers and knuckles, and metal carpet boss.  Not only are Adaman’s knuckles exposed when he clenches his fists, there is no wrapping supporting his wrists on the left hand.  If he is wrapping them to fight, he is doing a very bad job at it.

I did research on this before writing the initial post and came to this conclusion, but I guess I’ll add it now for those that had questions.

Another interesting note is that the Diamond Clan symbol also looks like a stylized version of the characters for gold.  This same character also does appear in the work kintsugi.

Adaman’s name is interesting too since it’s not really a common name.  In fact, it seems to be a play on word “adamant” which usually refers to someone who is not willing to change their mind or opinion.  HOWEVER , Adamant is an archaic diamond found in Greek/Roman mythology.  It is a bit of a legendary diamond of sorts. The name is derived from the Greek word for diamond. “adámas”.

If you remember, in the Diamond and Pearl games you can use the “Adamant Orb” to increase the dragon/steel type moves of Dialga by 20% if they hold it. In Pokemon Legends Arceus you can get the “Adament Crystal from Adaman.  This can be used to switch Dialga between Origin and normal form.  

Also random interesting thought. The diamond clan settlement is located in the crimson mirelands. Out of the different areas, this one has the most ideal conditions to create pottery clay next to bodies of water (Lake valor) , the scarlet bog, and the mountainous areas surrounding the settlement. Very similar to the Mashiko and Hagi pottery villages in japan.