Art and Design A comprehensive guide for creative artists - Aaltodoc

• A pottery artist needs enough energy and strength
to dig and mix clay. It is heavy work.
• Since clay is used at an appropriate stage of easy
shaping or moulding, the process of preparation is
time consuming.
Advantages
• As a clay artist, it is not expensive to dig your own
clay. Yet, it is up to you to form opinions about how
to expend or make use of the available mined clay.
• If a pottery artist dug his/her clay, it is easy
to apportion clay for particular tasks without
restraints.
• Digging clay is a plus to a pottery artist to make
creative decisions and operations of supply and
demand.
• And certainly, it is very remarkable for a pottery
artist to have ready clay mined and kept. Your
instructors or teachers will consider you able and
reliable.
• Finally, mining clay is substantial for a pottery
artist—to have an outdoor ten-finger and body
exercise.
Some pottery and other clay learners detest or despise clay,
but they get to like it after realising its lack of sophistication
and practical purposes. “Every pottery” artist “will have
to evaluate this factor on an individual basis. Mixing your
own clay offers the intangible benefit of allowing you to
be completely involved in the pottery endeavour.” (Zamek
1999, 71)
Preparing clay for pottery
The various ways of preparing clay for use in making
pottery artworks are nearly the same as those used for
producing sculpture clay artworks. Michael et al (2007,
140) note, “contemporary ceramic artists work with clay to
produce sculptures and studio potters make a wide range
of hand-built and wheel thrown utilitarian items. Taking
clay from the earth, shaping it, decorating it and firing it;
are some of the remarkable activities, which come from
very old and basic professions.” Preparing clay involves a lot
of undesirable and vigorous actions that may take long for
learners to accept or regard as being of little worth.
That is to say, if a clay source is at a swamp, then digging
clay by themselves shall be their starting point or stage.
However, this analysis does not present an established order
for the activities necessary during the process of preparing
clay for pottery.
Let us randomly go through some notable stages of
preparing clay:
a. Crushing is done by smashing dry clay into reduced
pieces—very nearly to powder form after allowing it to
dry. This is the stage at which a creative pottery artist
can be able to make a quicker preparation process
since clay will already be reduced to smaller pieces.
Crushed clay is easy to soak, sieve or sift.
b. Sieving clay can be done after converting it into a
creamy watery mixture. Sometimes, dry ground clay is
put into a sieve; also to remove lumps or large particles
when it is in a powdery state. Sieving clay is a stage of
preparation where large grains of unwanted particles
are separated from a loose matter, guarded from
impurities by gathering sieved clay into a container
below a sieve.
c. Mixing clay can be done by using hands or with
some other tools such as a blunger. Just like digging
clay; mixing your own clay is necessary for the reason
that you will get a chance to learn how to mix clay
ingredients. For example, grog, a crushed material from
fired bricks—used for reducing cracking and shrinkage
of a readymade pottery artwork. Sometimes mixing
clay involves procedures and actions of kneading and
wedging.
d. Draining clay happens when wet clay is daubed
to dry or loose water. By local methods, a pottery
artist can haphazardly smudge or smear wet clay
on a desiccating (porous adsorbent) surface to take
water or moisture out; sometimes by evaporation.
As an alternative, draining clay can also be done by
immersing pieces of plaster of Paris into a container
carrying the liquefied clay. Dry plaster of Paris drains
waters out and thus turns liquid clay into a workable
solid lump of clay.
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