645. Class Project 1~ Throwing a Roller Texture Lidded Jar with Hsin-Chuen Lin 林新春 滾花瓷蓋罐課堂拉坯示範

First, make sure your clay stick on here. You could have a little bit of a, if you have a wooden bed, you could have a little bit of water on your bed, just a little bit, not too much. It's helping the clay to stick on your bed. And then make sure you do this, okay? So that your clay is more or less in the center. It's gonna save you a lot of effort for trying to push your clay. Because if you are not putting the clay in the center, you're gonna fight with it, you're gonna struggle with it. Maybe you spend like five, 10 minutes just trying to push it to the center, okay? All right, and wet the surface. I use my water very efficiently, so that means I don't usually use the sponge to just squeeze a lot of water. Water's not gonna stick. So water goes to the splash pan. So just wet your hand and then just touch up on the clay. That's all you need, okay? All right, and brace your arm somewhere, finding very good support. That's all you need, right? Brace it and just squeeze it and push. Just use your right hand. If your clay's not very stiff, it's very easy to push. All right, you see that? I didn't even move my right hand. It's my right hand, it's like the wall. So when I push the clay, the clay's hitting the wall. And you see that? My arm is connecting on the splash pan. So the clay has nowhere to go. Your right hand is a contact on this area with part of the- Okay, that right hand, okay, it's gonna be more efficient. I saw a lot of people try to use this hand to push. No, wrong, okay? Because you distribute all your force. It's not creating a lot of pressure to it. So you see that when I'm doing it, I kind of curving my hand, my fingers. So the middle actually is not touching a whole lot of the clay. It's this fingertip that works, okay? This fingertip, see that? Okay, so let me explain why I'm doing that, okay? You put a rib here and put a bag of clay, 25 pounds here. And the same thing, you put 25 pounds of clay, which one if you hurt? This or this needle, right? The knife, why? The smaller area in the surface, on the surface, you create more pressure. The same thing. If you do that, you're wasting your energy, right? If you curve, see that? It's a lot easier for you to push the clay around. And that's basic physics, but it's a lot easier, okay? So that's why, see that? I could sand down my clay easily and very fast. And without a lot of water. If you have this, the more area touch it, you create more friction. More friction, you need to add more water, okay? So that's the technique. All right, now let's open it, okay? Usually when you open it, you still want to find some kind of support. So see that I'm using my right thumb to take the hole. Or people could use both thumbs, okay? It's kind of leverage it. So either way, I personally prefer using my just right thumb to just make the hole, and the left thumb is helping, right? And when I'm digging it, you see that? Where's my right hand? I'm still compressing, so I don't lose my center, okay? Right, so making a little shallow hole here, then I'm gonna drill deeper. I'm gonna use my left hand, okay? Some people do use the right hand, but normally I use my right hand to hold it on the outside. It's because the way I spin the wheel is counterclockwise. And this part here, when I'm drilling it, my fingertip can still work to control the wall. If I do this, this tip is doing nothing, okay? That's why when you see people, when they're throwing counterclockwise, they always work on the right-hand side. If the wheel's spinning clockwise, they work on the left-hand side, right? And then you wanna drill from the very center. It don't widen it yet until you reach the very bottom, okay? So see that? The hand is always connecting together, and here, you see that? Drill and drill and drill and drill and drill until I reach, I would say, between 3 1⁄4 of an inch to 1⁄2 of an inch, depending on how tall you wanna leave your foot, okay? Right? And from my experience, this is good. If you're not sure, get a needle and check it, okay? And once I reach to the right thickness, I'm gonna bring my fingertip toward my right hand so to widen, to make the floor flat. So now, I am slowly moving my fingertips toward my right hand, okay? Right, and then slowly compressing it. Even you can make a little indentation. See that inside? There's a little curve there. So the little curve is helping when you bring up your wall, you don't feel of having too much clay on the inside corner, okay? You're gonna have more of a vertical, 90 degrees on the inside corner. So your piece will be lighter. That's when you are throwing a cylinder. If you are making a ball, then you wanna open a little bit different, okay? But making a cylinder, you wanna have at least 90 degrees, 90 degrees. And some people have a hard time just trying to use a finger to smooth the bottom floor. And that's why I developed a tool, okay? So this is a new tool that I developed, I designed it. So it's for compressing the bottom floor, just using this part here, okay? So it's a lifesaver, that fingertip saver, okay? So that you end up with getting a very nice sharp angle on the corner, okay? So that's the two of four for that one side of that. And then after that, you are going to lift, okay? When my piece is lower, my initial lift is basically just pinch the clay, right? And then raise it up, okay? So left hand is pinched here, and then pick it up. In the meantime, I wanna stabilize my left hand, so I am connecting my left hand to my right hand. And my right hand is connecting to the left hand. And make sure it is slippery, okay? Make sure that is very important. And see that everything is under my control, right? And my left hand is, when my left hand is lifting, my right hand, my right thumb is compressing here, and this hand is still controlling the wall. So everything, and my wrist, my elbow is connecting to this back hand, okay? All right, so first initial lifting, slowly but surely, but steady. That looks easy. Okay, see that? Yeah. Okay, this is connecting everything together. So you see that when you raise the wall, the wall is not wobbly, because everything is under my control, and I'm bracing my elbow here, okay? And when you're doing like the C, are these two at the same plane, or is one higher than the other? Usually it's one higher, the inside hand usually is a little bit higher than the outside hand. Got it. Okay, that way it's more efficient, okay? Gonna pinch like that, okay? The outside hand is just controlling it, connecting it, stabilize my left hand. It's basically this left hand lifting. Okay, and you see that? This is good stuff. Don't throw it away. If you don't find there's nothing, not any lump there, remove it from your fingertip and just hold it on the inside of the wall so that you don't need to squeeze water and water get a little puddle inside and that the water's sitting inside for too long. The spot is very weak, okay? So that's that slippery. And for outside, it's a lot easier. You just touch up. That's all. And for me to pour the color, I usually like to make my cylinder a little bit narrower. So when you color, your cylinder is gonna grow a little bit, grow color a little bit. Before I do that, I also wanna make sure my cylinder, my base is a little bit narrower, okay? So this is what I do. My right hand, okay, connect it here and bring the clay in. Mostly it's my right. Because left hand, this tip is against the direction. So use the right, but this hand is to stabilize it, okay? Slippery and once you bring it in, you just hold color up, right? On a little hook of the fingertip, compressing the rim, okay? Slippery, there's still a lot of clay there. I am going to get to use of it. So I keep on bringing the clay in and squeeze it up. Use that clay in the corner. Now I'm going to erase the wall. A lot of people have different method of doing it, okay? You can use a finger tip to tip or use thumb spot. But my method is using here of my right thumb and the inside hand push. So basically it's the hand like this. The thumb is point down, okay? And this hand is kind of slightly touching the wall, okay? You can lean your body a little bit this way. You pull it up, raise it up, okay? That way, why I like this? Because my elbow is tucked into my tummy. I'm using my tummy as a support. And when I raise up, there's also a support. Versus if you do that, a lot of people like to do it away from your body, like at three o'clock. So all your elbow is away, which is not very stable, okay? Versus doing this on your body, it's more stable, okay? And plus, if you are using just a tip, you create less friction. So you don't need to add a lot of water, especially true for porcelain that you don't want your porcelain to get wobbly. Less water, more slip, okay? Less water, more slip. All right, slippery. So first I will push out from inside. You see that I'm expanding. There's a little belly, or you can say belly or tire, okay? And then I'm fitting my thumb right underneath of the belly. And then pull, okay, pull the wall together. Right here, you see that? Everything is connecting. Put it on my little belly and raise. I'm taking my time. One full rotation, I move up. Okay? All right? Okay? We'll do one more time. This time I'm gonna be more aggressive. But first, slippery. Play in the corner. You could get to use it. You might want to squeeze it in. Okay? So I am going to expand it. So I am not going to throw my wall too thin because I want to push, expand it out. So I'll keep it a little bit of a thickness there. And now I want to make sure that wall is straight and also make sure that that is fitting. See? This piece is fitting inside. Okay? So for keeping that straight, also another tool, okay? And you don't need to move the whole lot. Just hold your rib outside. Steady. See that? And let the inside hand doing the job. Right? Yeah, yeah. Inside pushing it out. So slightly push it out so it's against the rib. The rib outside is just like a wall. So when you push all the clay hitting the wall, if the wall is not moving, the wall is going to be straight, right? So your wall is going to be straight. And you're pushing with fingertips or just? Okay? This is where it touches. The boss is this index finger. Second and last. Okay? So the wall is straight. And now we could try to see if this one is fitting in here. You don't have to be too small or too small, you cannot fit it in. Too large, you have to work harder. You have to push a lot of clay. So it's closer to maybe a quarter of an inch wider than the actual size. Here. Looks fine. I don't want this wrinkle. Yeah. Messing up the bottom. So it's softened a little bit. Dip it in the water to make it a little bit soft. Right? And see how it goes. Yeah. I didn't measure it. I just eyeballed it. All right. So it's very close, right? Very close to it. And then now, again, we need to mess up the wall, but first we want to get rid of all the throwing mud. And then from here, when you squeeze it, make sure you don't squeeze here. If you do it on the top portion, you're going to seal the air. The air cannot release. So you have to push from the bottom up, okay? So now I'm going to put a little bit more water to lubricate. And you see that when I'm throwing this slidder, my splash pan is clean. You don't need to wash it, right? It's because you use the slip efficiently. Use water efficiently, okay? All right. Slowly squeeze it. I'm using more of like this part here. That is more smooth area, okay? So squeeze it in and slowly raise it up so that you want the clay to fit it on the wall very tight. All right. So it's very tight. It's not wobbling a whole lot. And then I could come back on, okay? I am keeping this corner so that it's a little bit stronger and I can trim it up later. I trim it up later. All right. Now for the texture. So this, if you are just rolling like that, the clay eventually is going to stick on here. So to prevent that from happening, usually you want about wet your roller, okay? Wet your roller. So let's just start from here. That pin here, there's another pin here. So that's the middle of the pin. And when you roll, you don't roll all the way through the top. Leave about maybe one inch without pushing it. If you squeeze it all the way, you might mess up the rim, which is going to be more difficult for you to make it nicer. So make sure that you roll it all the way. Leave about one inch, okay? And when you are rolling, it's easier to hold your roller like 45 degrees. This way it's easier for you to pull. If you do that, it's very hard to find your pressure. So this way up, it's easier. And you can hold it on your cylinder to support it. All right, so here, okay. That's the texture. And I want to roll, because I want to alternate it. So I want to roll here, right? And then let's decide how many, maybe let's do this way. Little bit overlap, okay? So you want to calculate one more, two more, one more, okay? So you put three more. So you want to overlap a little bit, okay? So I got the texture evenly distributed all over the circle. Okay, so calculate how much room you have, okay? Plan ahead, okay, plan ahead. All right, so that's how you roll the texture. Then pull out your cylinder, okay? Remember, we have two layers, so it's easier to pull out the inner layer. And then for this one, you just pick up from the inside part, and you just slowly roll it, right? Now we want to expand it, but before we do that, make sure you lubricate it, okay? So get a sponge, okay? And lubricate it, okay? And you can hold the sponge, use the sponge to expand it too, if you like. And now you cannot touch the outside anymore, so. That's true. Yeah, so we'll just push from the inside of the cylinder, and you do it little by little. Compress the rim a bit. So for shaping, usually you want to look further, okay? So you watch, you see that I'm putting my head here to look at here, right? My head is here, and look at the curve. And this part here, I want to expand more, then my inside hand could just push a little further. So that's how you shape it when you are shaping it, where to look at. And don't stretch too much here, because if you stretch too much, if you stretch too much here, the structure is a little weak. So you could stretch from this point up, and later, you're going to get it wider, you can go back there and then do it at the last, okay? So you have more support, okay? A lot of people try to stretch from this, they want to expand it, and the way from the top is collapsing the piece. So if you wanted to do a moon jar, you start at the top first. Start at the top first, okay? The weakest, for the moon jar, the weakest part is this part here on the shoulder, okay? Yep, taking your time to stretch it. And now I'm going to close the top a little bit, so I'm adding a little bit of water on the rim, keeping the rim a little bit smaller. Small enough for my hand to get inside, so that you don't need to, after you shape it, you don't need to try to push all the clay in. Small enough, and then I'm going to refine the shape just using my finger. The index finger? Yeah, it's all the fingers, okay? One, two, three, four, the same thing, just push out. Yeah, just take your time. You're still working on- I'm still working on refining the shape, so this part here could curve a little bit more. So it's a little bit taller? Yeah, just for that part. Okay, that's the shaping. And I'm going to make this a cover jar, so that, the neck is a little bit too tall, so I want to just trim it off, make it into a cover jar. So I'm pushing this part here to stretch it out further. This part. The shoulder, yeah, the shoulder. To make the shape more follow through. And you can see that I spend almost two-thirds of my time making the shape, then I lift it. Okay? A lot of people do opposite. They think they could make the shape right away, but just take your time. Take your time to refine your shape. Okay? And then I'm just going to smooth here. The neck doesn't need to be so tall, so I'm going to cut it again. Before I do that, I might want to smooth the inside of the bottom. I forgot to do that. Okay? So what I am doing is use the little hand supported on the inside, and then I kind of form in a little curve here. And both hand is, my right index finger is squeezing, squeezing it a little bit. Okay? And it's a little bit messy there, so I would come back and make sure that I take care of it. One more time. Right? Shape. And now I could trim this corner up. Just follow the curve. So I'm holding the cutting knife. Slowly, but very steady, and cutting all the way until I hit the back. And slowly pull out. Okay? So when the foot is smaller, the whole piece looks lighter. So that's the trick. But you need to have a little bit of a clay to support it while you are pushing. This is a lot of stress pushing there. So leave it there, but at the very final stage, just cut it up. So you don't need to trim a whole lot. Okay?