Thursday 27 August 2009

Extrusions in clay






Had a lovely time using the new extruder & playing with clay today at my friends.
We were also joined by another ERA artist who is a wonderful animal portrait painter and you can see her work on the link below:


The new extruder was completely different to what I had used at college before and I was expecting to produce coils and make coil pots. This one had many different fittings which you could attach and mix n match. What it produced were tubes of different thickness and shape, everything from a simple circular tube of about an inch diameter to a large, hexagonal tube of about 3 inch diameter. The possibilites for making vases and small bottles quickly was a great advantage although it did take a bit of cleaning out when you wanted to change the extruding plates for different shapes. It's a great way of making things and then deconstructing the shape a bit by hand afterwards or decorating and distressing in a unique way.

You can see some of the extrusions here and extruding in progress. I did this square vase with a circular centre and have applied contrasting coloured slip to it.

Also shown is my goose who has been fired and will be smoke fired to decorate him at a later date.

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