What I wish I knew when I started making pottery as a eginner

In two years, I learned to make pottery on the pottery wheel from scratch. I can confidently say that I am not the same person now that I was when I started two years ago. The first piece I ever made is lumpy and the rim is all crazy because it accidentally flew off the wheel when I was trimming it. I'm currently using it as a candle. It's a cherished memory of where I started. This bowl is my second piece and I was inspired by a henna design and decided to try carving it in. One of the main lessons I've been taught through pottery is to become comfortable with being a beginner. Accept that you will fail and fail a lot at the start. Remember this though, you learn the most through failure. Every single potter whose skills and work you envy right now started just like you, at the beginning. No one is born with skill. The only difference between you, a beginner, and a master is that the master has failed more than the beginner has even tried. And if I were to go back in time to me two years ago when I was so frustrated and wondered whether I would ever get good, I would tell her this, you will 100% become better because the main difference between the master and the beginner is time. There's this saying I like, don't compare your day one to someone else's day 100. Throughout this video I am making three tall vases using three different techniques. The first one is made out of two parts which are combined at the leather hard stage after trimming. The second one is also made out of two parts but they are combined at the wet initial throwing stage and with the last one I tried decorating it with slip for the first time. Another lesson I learned is that it's okay to look dumb and ask questions. This goes hand in hand a bit with being comfortable with being a beginner. I think a lot of the time, especially if you're a person who is already good at some one field, learning something new again is greatly humbling. You end up learning so much about yourself and how to break out of that box of pride that you have created that keeps you from trying new things and sticking to it. I was this way when I first started. When my sister and mom came to me and said that we should go to pottery classes together, I was like, why would I? I'm already good enough at drawing and that's all I need. I'm so grateful that they pushed me and told me to just try for a couple of lessons. While I still make a lot of drawings and paintings, I think that the lessons I learned from making pottery have indirectly caused my paintings and drawings to greatly improve as well. I'd like to say thank you to all the recent new subscribers to this channel and to those of you who have been here from the very beginning. Thank you for believing in me. I really appreciate you and love reading all your kind comments. Thank you. To me, pottery is like therapy. There is so much character building that goes on over the course of your pottery making journey that I can confidently say that I am not the same person now that I was when I started two years ago. Creating pottery involves a lot of physical technicalities and boundaries such as gravity that if you don't follow you end up losing your piece. Because of this, you learn to accept that usually nothing works out exactly as you had planned and to be flexible. You might want to make your piece taller but if the walls are too thin then it's physically impossible. The glaze you painted your pottery piece with will look entirely different after the firing process and it's impossible to predict exactly how it will look. This makes you more accepting and easygoing in regards to the outcomes of your pieces in general. Sometimes you just have to let go of control and let your artwork be what it wants to be. My pottery teacher and mentor once said, your pottery pieces are like family members. You get what you get and you love them anyway. And I think this mindset which becomes embedded into you through making pottery is relevant to your life outside of making art as well. By embracing your capabilities and your surroundings right now, while they might not be perfect, you create a healthy mindset to see your blessings and build upon what you want to change. You can be happy with what you have and still strive for better. There's this story from Atomic Habits by James Clear which goes like this. On the first day of class, Jerry Usselman, I might be pronouncing this wrong, a professor at the University of Florida divided his film beginning photography students into two groups. Everyone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the quantity group. They would be graded solely on the amount of work they produced. On the final day of class, he would tally the number of photos submitted by each student. 100 photos would rate an A, 90 photos a B, 80 photos a C, and so on. Meanwhile, everyone on the right side of the room would be in his quality group. They would be graded only on the excellence of their work. They would only need to produce one photo during the semester, but to get an A, it had to be a nearly perfect image. At the end of the term, he was surprised to find that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. During the semester, these students were busy taking photos, experimenting with composition and lighting, testing out various methods in the darkroom, and learning from their mistakes. In the process of creating hundreds of photos, they honed their skills. Meanwhile, the quality group sat around speculating about perfection. In the end, they had little to show for their efforts other than unverified theories and one mediocre photo. When learning something new, focus on quantity over quality. That is one of the biggest secrets to great improvement. Finally, the last lesson I learned from making pottery that we will talk about in this video is start before you know how. If you want to make a cool carving on one of your pottery pieces but aren't exactly sure how, just start. I have full confidence that you can figure it out. And if you're not a fan of how it turns out, now you know what not to do. Now make a new piece with a new carving and try again. If you want to make a tall vase but aren't sure if you're ready yet, just start anyways. You miss all the opportunities you don't take. I also think that there is no such a thing as feeling ready for something. If you notice, you never run out of reasons why you aren't ready. Simply take the leap and who knows, you might pleasantly surprise yourself. These are my latest vases which tops off my two-year pottery making journey and just as a comparison, here is where we started out and here is where we are now. If anything in this video was helpful and speaks to you, please leave a like and share your thoughts in the comments down below. Thank you for watching.