« FTK!! (For The Kids!!) | Home | Wearing His Meat On His Sleeve »
You Want Me to Make What?
By Stephanie C. | February 11, 2013
For my Fine Arts Honors GE requirement, I decided to take Intro to High-Fire Ceramics (Art 2500) and it is really giving me a run for my money!
I meant to actually blog this awhile ago, but because of this class, my time has been absolutely consumed! Along with the three hours labs that we have twice a week, we are supposed to spend 2 hours in the studio outside of lab for each hour that we are actually in lab. Did that make sense?
The hardest part, I think (besides having OTHER CLASSES, too), is that I am an extreme perfectionist when it comes to art and other creative projects so it takes me much longer to complete my work. I also have been really frustrated with certain aspects of the class because, to my surprise, it was a lot harder than I’d expected!
It all started with these little vase-shape things that we had to throw on the wheel. It took me forever to get it down but I eventually made some identical shapes.
Then, we were expected to throw six cylinders, six inches tall. I thought that this wouldn’t be too bad, everyone, but I was most definitely mistaken. In fact, none of my cylinders were more than four inches (some were less) and I only made five…..and then one broke. :(
After we had the cylinders finished, we were to practice surface decoration techniques on them:
This is the stencil technique. I had to print out the stencil that I wanted to use, dip it in water and stick it onto my pre-painted cylinder. Then I painted over it and after it dried, peeled off the paper!
This is a technique called sgraffito. This means painting a layer of one color and then a layer of another and scratching off the top to reveal the under-layer. Unfortunately, I may have used too much paint which caused some cracking when I scratched.
This last technique is called stamping. Some people used molds to make their stamps but I hand-crafted the bows and I thought it turned out pretty cute!
We were also assigned a project to make 2D shapes into 3D shapes. Don’t understand? I didn’t either, don’t worry. By this he meant that we needed to cut the shapes out of slabs and then “glue” them together to make a 3D shape. For example, a cylinder is two circles and a large rectangle. After getting them to stick (this is much harder than it sounds), we had to smooth them to look like solid shapes. Here are mine:
Last but not least, we were to make a bust of ourselves. This was difficult because my first completed bust was beheaded – :( – so I had to start over! I can’t say my bust really looks like me too much because I used the cheek structure I have when I’m smiling instead of when my face is solemn. I was still pretty proud, though!
Again, I apologize for my lack of blogging, but now you have an idea where my mind has been at lately. Please understand that I am an Honors student and in other classes besides this hectic art class, as well! So this has been my friend:
“Life comes at you fast.”
-Right?
Topics: Author, Classes, Honors & Scholars, Personal, Schedules, Stephanie C., Stress, Student Life | Comments Off
Comments are closed.