Clay Ceramic Pottery For Beginners

You can learn how to glaze pottery with these helpful tips

Now that you have shaped and formed your clay pottery, the fun part it over. Now it is time to get down to business. The shaping has been completed and it has taken the appropriate form. However, if a ceramic piece is left to its own devices, it would serve very little purpose due to the fact that clay is porous substance. This means that once a liquid substance is placed in an unglazed piece, the liquid will leak out of the open pores rendering the piece ineffective if its purpose is for more than merely decoration. Glazing is often viewed as a tedious job that can make or break a piece. However, there are ways to make this process less painful and much more enjoyable. These simple pottery glazing tips can help beginners successfully complete their works of art with minimal difficulties.

The first step that must be take prior to glazing a piece is to make sure hands are free of all lotion and oil. These substances can cause the glaze to cover the vessel unevenly. It is also important to clean of any dust and grime that might have found its way to the piece during any prior work being done. The next step is to make sure the there are no rough spots on the piece. If rough spots are found they should be sanded and then wiped clean with a damp cloth. It is also important to ensure the glaze is well mixed.

Now that the proper preparations have been made it is time to begin the actual glazing process. There are several ways in which to apply glaze. The type of pottery that is being glazed will determine which technique needs to be used. The first step in glazing is the inside of the vessel. The easiest way to apply glaze to the inside of a piece is to pour the glaze inside and then lay it on its side. While the piece is on its side it should then be gently rolled on its side so the glaze reaches all sides. Once the inside of the vessel is completely covered the excess glaze should be poured out and set aside. It is now time for the more difficult part of glazing the outside. If it is a simple piece one option for glazing is to simply dip the pottery into a shallow bowl. This may be done one side at a time or the entire vessel at once.

Another option is using a paintbrush. This is an effective way to coat pottery that have numerous details and nooks and crannies. With this technique it is essential to use gravity as an advantage. It is quite simple to hold a piece of pottery at an angle in which the glazing drips or runs in the direction that the artist prefers. This keeps the glaze from running in to unwanted areas of the piece. The final option when coating pottery is a sponge. A sponge tends to coat more quickly that a paintbrush but cannot always reach all areas so these two techniques can be used together. Excess glaze should be removed with a paintbrush to ensure an even coating.

While this is not an all inclusive list, these tips will make a tedious process a little more fun. Pottery making is a fun, soothing process for many artists and glazing can help enhance that feeling if done properly. It is important to always remember to use the most comfortable technique for the artist, not the one someone recommends.

Here is a YouTube video that also give some good tips.

I’m always looking for a better way to do things. Granted, there are certain aspects of pottery that you just can’t rush. While that is true, I’ve come to learn that there are short cuts for some of the remedial task. That’s why I love reading books like “250 Tips, Techniques, and Trade Secrets for Potters: The Indispensable Compendium of Essential Knowledge and Troubleshooting Tips“. While the title may be a mile long, this book promises a good deal of information and delivers on it, in spades!

But probably the best thing that I loved about this book wasn’t the time saving tips, which is why I bought it in the first place, it was the little details that I picked up along the way, as well as the new ideas (at least for me) that the book contained.

For example, the author (Jacqui Atkin), goes into detail about the different types of clays and the qualities that each have. Wow. I was never told a lot of this stuff when I was taking classes! I’m far from an expert, and after reading this book, I can see why!

The book is laid out very well. Even a novice such as myself can learn from it because many of the tips and techniques are laid out with step by step instructions accompanied by very detailed photos. Next to watching someone do it on video or in person, these photo’s along with the tips really helped me learn some cool new techniques.

Jacqui has also included a wealth of information in this book about slabbing, pinching, coiling, throwing, mold-making and turning. And you guessed it, all with step by step information with photos to show you how it’s done.

I also appreciated the chapter on creating surface decorations. I’ve been wanting to get into making decorative tiles but was unsure about which way to go for adding the most durable and high quality decorations to the tiles. Now that I have this book, I think I’ve found my technique and I can’t wait to try it out.

I found the little sidebar tips to be really helpful as well. In fact, I’d go as far to say that this book is like a Bible of Ceramics. It’s obvious from reading it that Jacqui is very well versed in ceramic pottery. She is also a master at communicating effectively through the writings of this book. While some other pottery books may be confusing and intimidating for beginners such as myself, I found 250 Tips, Techniques, and Trade Secrets for Potters to be very easy to use and follow. I can’t tell you what a great help it’s been helping me expand my skills and accuracy.

The place where I found the best price on this book was at Amazon.com. As if that was a surprise! But other places had it for a few bucks more, but I seem to always gravitate back to Amazon.

There are all kinds of products designed to help blogs update on auto-pilot.  These applications are built upon spiders that crawl the world wide web looking for content that matches key terms that you have put into the program. Then they take the content they locate and put it on your site. You benefit from having a website that is full of content that is updated routinely without having to do the actual work of creating that fresh content yourself. It may seem like it is a wish that is coming true. Except for the fact that…google frowns on such services. And if you’re into internet marketing, and you’re not legitimately trying to find ways to make money quick, then you could be in for a big surprise.

It seems as if Google is gearing up for a considerable cracking down on those sites that aren’t filled with original content. They are adding measures in place that will enable them to check your site’s content to make sure that it hasn’t shown up somewhere else first. If your website has primarily copied and pulled materials, you will be in trouble. You will definitely lose points in the eyes of Google. So what happens to the folks who want to build an automated business?

This primarily means that the business owners and creators around are going to have to learn how to truly work hard or find the money to pay others to work hard for them. This is really a fantastic thing. This helps to protect the select few who are working hard to produce original content. This also helps make certain that a person is building a legitimate company. If you aren’t very good at creating or composing content for your web page, you need to pay someone to create that content for you. Trust us when we explain that your investment will be really worth it.

The real fact is that, online, there are lots of sites that are made upon the hard work of others. These sites use plagiarized content and then make money by slapping up a bunch of advertisements. While this is often a great way to make a few extra dollars, if you get caught you can be confident that you are going to get into some major trouble. Robbing content material is kind of a big deal, after all. Students all over the place can get expelled from college for failing to correctly cite a reference. Imagine the lawsuit you may be facing if you don’t credit your source correctly or even just blatantly steal someone else’s intellectual property! Isn’t it easier just to do your own publishing and creating?

The real truth is that if you really want to generate income, you need to be ready to do some serious work. Google is looking to reward individuals who do the hard work and punish individuals who are using other people’s hard work for their own benefit. This is for the best. It may help to make things on the web a lot more fair for those who are really trying to help others and make a real living instead of rewarding people who use shoddy tactics to make a quick buck.

So web people should get ready to do some genuine and hard work. Google is definitely searching for a reason to take down the people who aren’t willing to do real work to find honest ways to make money quick!

We’re trying to actively foster, develop, and advocate support for ceramic arts and artists in our community. We welcome you to come join in the fun and excitement one get’s when creating a work of art. We’d also like to encourage the artistic expression of and foster communication among ceramic artists and to promote awareness and appreciation of ceramic arts through education and interaction with artists, business, education, government, and the citizens of Cary, NC, and surrounding areas.