Pinch Pot Personalities: Part 2

When we left off last time, poor Jeremy (as I’ve decided to call him) had eyes and a nose, but no mouth. What a pickle! I’m going to call Cheri’s little guy Vince, though I’m sure she would have some other name for him (that is, if she weren’t out camping this weekend, in what I’m calling a gentle, soaking rain and she’s probably thinking of as a miserable drizzle). Anyway, Jeremy’s (and Vince’s) mouth parts . . .

This is the upper lip. You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s thicker along the bottom edge. It fits in under the tip of the nose and has to be smoothed down inside the nostrils.

After scoring and dampening the area, I applied the lip and smoothed in all the edges. Note the lines on the lower part of the lip. I didn’t mean to put them there, but I’m going to leave them. After applying the upper lip, I repeated the process for the lower lip. I like to put on the upper lip first because it’s easier to work out placement, but the corners of the upper lip need to overlap those of the lower lip slightly, so I tuck the lower lip corners in under those of the upper lip. That’s if you’re going for quasi-realism. If it’s cartoony you’re after, it doesn’t matter about the corners.

As you remember, Cheri is giving Vince a different sort of mouth. Look back at Part 1 to see how she prepared her face to receive its features if you don’t remember. The mouth is all caved in like a real mouth, and she’s going to give Vince a set of dentures next. Sorry about the fuzzy photos–I was having trouble figuring out the camera’s macro feature.

As you can see, she’s made him a little rounded gum and is poking teeth into the slots. If you want to get fancy, you can use white clay for the teeth–only make sure it fires to the same temperature as your main clay. Just dip the root in a drop of water before inserting it, then pinch the gum around it firmly. And here is the finished set of chompers:

She’s just slipped them in so you can see, but she’ll be scoring and dampening, etc., of course. Doesn’t he look delightfully goofy?

Here he is with upper and lower lips in place, and he’s almost ready to dry. Meanwhile, Jeremy still needs something to stand on. I think I’ll give him feet. Real feet–well, kind of real . . .

Get two equal-sized blobs of clay and round them out into kind of a cucumber shape. You’re going to make pinch-pot feet and ankles. It’s just like making any pinch pot except you’ll be squishing it into a bootie shape and you’ll leave the arches fairly thick and the toes solid.

For my purposes, I want the walls of my pinch-pot feet to stay pretty thick to provide support. At this point, they’re as thin as I’m going to make them. The next step is to gently squoosh (that’s a technical term) the clay into a foot shape. Take off your shoes and look at your feet if you need a reference. 😉

Forming both feet at the same time will help you in getting them the same size. Once you’ve satisfied yourself with their shape, you can divide the toes from one another with a knife or needle tool or whatever you have. You can do four or five toes–cartoon characters usually have four, but I did five anyhow.

I’m using a wooden modeling tool (you could sharpen a Popsicle stick if you haven’t got anything else) to start rounding off his toes. I finished them by rolling them between my fingers. Just do whatever it takes to get nicely rounded toes. Again, do both feet before going on to the next step.

This high-tech tool is the lid to a Bic pen. It’s just right for making these tiny toe-nails and it works fine for making the toe wrinkles as well. You can go as far as you’d like to with making the feet realistic.

Jeremy’s feet are all ready to go now. Let’s try them on:

Oops! Way too tall! He looks like a naked basketball player. All I want him to do is sit there and hold my salsa. Let’s cut them off a bit . . .

There–loads better. Once you’re satisfied with the feet, mark their location, score, moisten and attach securely.

I felt almost guilty doing this to Jeremy’s cute little feet, but if you don’t poke a hole to give a hollow place access to let off steam, the expanding air and moisture during firing will make a hole of its own–usually somewhat violently. Sign your name or mark to the bottom of his foot (the only place that won’t be glazed) and cover him with plastic for a day or two to allow the various pieces you’ve joined together to equalize in moisture content and get used to hanging out together.

Cheri has given Vince a pair of eyebrows, which adds greatly to his personality, as does her decision to forgo a lower eyelid.

And here’s one more shot of Jeremy, in a classic 3/4 portraiture pose. Once Vince and Jeremy are done being fired and glazed, I’ll post another shot of them. Meanwhile, here are a couple of different pinch pot characters to give you some inspiration.

God bless,

Cindy

Pinch Pot Personalities: Part One

As you can see, I had a little fun playing with the background for this pot in my paint program. It’s an example of a type of pottery that people have been making for thousands of years, mostly using a jug or bottle for the canvas rather than a wide-topped pot as you see here. Like so many before me, I’m fascinated with drawing, painting, and sculpting the human face. Most of my face pots are rather cartoonish, but I tried to make this one a little more realistic. Let me show you how I make these funny, fun face pots . . .

Start by making a fairly large pinch pot. I’m going to add a texture to mine, so I’ll make my pinch pot a little thicker than I normally would. Adding the texture will thin it out, and I don’t want it too flimsy because I’m going to be manipulating it a lot. In my last post, I showed you one way to make texture–this time I’m going to do something different.

This is the stamp I used for the texture on my pot. I made it by taking a blob of soft clay and pressing it into the grass outside my studio. I then affixed a knob to use as a handle, dried it, and bisque fired it. Bisque ware (ware that has had only one fairly low temperature firing) is porous, and so clay doesn’t stick to it as much as it might stick to other materials.

Supporting the pot on the inside with one hand, press the stamp repeatedly into the pot wall, against the fingers you’re holding inside, to make the texture. Keep moving the stamp around until you’ve textured the whole pot (or whatever portion you want textured). This is what my pot looked like when I had finished applying the grass texture.

This would be a good time for you to make some eyeballs for your character. Just roll several small balls of clay, making balls of various sizes that you think would be appropriate for eyeballs on your size pot. Later, you’ll cut them in half and decide which ones to use, but it’s a good idea to let them stiffen up a bit, so make them now.

The human face usually pushes out, starting with the cheek bones and down to the chin. To make my pot conform to this shape, I stretch it out by sweeping my thumb against the inside wall in the lower area of the face. It helps to cradle the outside of this area in your opposite palm, but I couldn’t do that for this photo, because someone had to press the button to take the picture and my daughter was busy.

This is what the pot looked like when I had finished stretching out the cheek and chin area. It’s possible that, in doing this, you will stretch the walls of your pot so thin that tiny holes appear. If this happens, don’t panic. Take a little ball of clay and flatten it out into a pancake with razor thin edges (but a bit thicker in the middle). If your pot is very moist, you needn’t score, but if it has dried out a bit, scratch the surfaces to be joined and dampen them with a small amount of water from an artist’s brush. Place your patch inside your pot, with the “wrong” side of your patch against the inside of the pot’s thin spot. Smooth the edges in and press the whole patch firmly into your pot’s wall while supporting the wall on the outside with your other hand.

My daughter Cheri is making pots with me today. She’s using an alternative method of making a face. She’s not worried about making the cheekbones and jaw thrust forward and has, instead, stretched the clay toward the inside to make eye sockets and a cave for the mouth. Notice that she’s already applied tripod feet to her pinch pot and that the feet are different from those described in my last post. There must be hundreds of ways to make these little feet, so experiment to find some alternatives that you think are cool.

At this point, take a ball of clay about an inch and a half in diameter and flatten it into an elongated pancake around 1/4″ thick. From it, cut a kite-shaped piece of clay, from which you’ll be making a nose for your character. The long leg of the kite shape will be the top of the nose, while the short leg will form the tip of the nose and the nostrils.

Cup the edges of your kite shape together as shown above. Curl in the ends for nostrils and use the point as the tip of the nose. Try the nose on your pot and adjust the shape and size to suit you.

This nose is really huge! I’m going to cut it down a bit. When you’re happy with the nose, trace around it with something sharp like a needle tool or a pencil.

Cheri’s character has a more reasonably sized nose.

Score the back edges of the nose, and inside the tracing of the nose on the wall of the pot, moisten the score marks with a little water, then stick on the nose.

Smooth the nose’s edges into the wall of the pot so that you don’t see the seam any more.

Smooth in the nose all around. If you need a tool, you can use anything you have on hand–a pencil works well, or a rounded chopstick. In some places, a plastic spoon is just the ticket, and the back end of the artist’s brush you’re using to paint water on also can be handy. If you feel like buying something, any ceramic supply store will have scores of wooden tools. Children’s playdough tools can be helpful, and you can often find good tools in the polymer clay section of a craft or hobby store. Other than smoothing and refining, this nose is about ready to go.

Here is Cheri’s little character with his nose all done and his eyes nearly finished as well.

And here is my nosey guy in a 3/4 pose. Eyes next. I’m going to hollow out my eyes just like Cheri did on her character, but I’m not going to hollow out the mouth.

Now is the time to cut those eyeballs in half. Use an old kitchen knife. You want one with a fairly narrow, thin blade. If you want to, buy yourself a palette knife at the ceramic supplier. Check out the different eyeball halves in your character’s eye sockets. You can stretch the sockets out a bit more if necessary. Remember, the eyeballs will be partially covered by eyelids, just like real eyes are. (Or you can leave them buggy if you prefer.)

Score the eye socket and the back of the eye, moisten with your brush, and place the eye. Wiggle it around to help it stick. Do the other eye.

Take a wee bit of clay and form it into a banana shape that is a little longer than the diameter of the eyeball. Squeeze it flat so that it is very thin, except for the edge that will lay over the eyeball. You want the edge of the lid to have a little thickness so that it will stand proud of the eyeball. Place this piece under the eye and crease it beneath the orb. Unless your pot has gotten quite hard, you don’t need to score and slip the eyelids. Smooth it out on either side. Obviously, this needs a bit more smoothing, but I’ll worry about that later. I try to remember to always do the lower lid first, because the upper lid overlaps it. Sometimes I forget, and then I have to fidget things around to make them work properly.

Before I added the upper lid, I carved away a little of the sclera (white) of the eye to leave the iris standing out from the eye slightly, as a real iris would. You don’t have to get this fancy. Sometimes I just poke a hole for the pupil and leave it at that. Unless you want your character to look really wacky, make sure the eyes are both pointed in exactly the same direction. For the upper lid, you’ll want a slightly wider and longer piece than you used for the lower lid. Flaten it out and apply it as you did the lower lid.

I’m going to stop here, as this is getting rather long. I do have the photos to continue this, however, and I’ll post the rest of the instructions soon. If you want to get started now, but would like to have complete instructions before you finish, that’s fine. Just go as far as you can, then wrap your project well in plastic. It’ll keep nicely for quite a while and I plan to get the remainder of this tutorial up by next Saturday or Sunday if not sooner.

God bless,

Cindy