10 Tips for Carving Pottery #note #tips #ceamic #potter #decor

Hi, this is Anne. Today I'll demonstrate and give you my best tips for low relief carving on pottery. Low relief, also called bass relief, is the process of carving away clay so that the positive areas of your design protrude above the negative areas, giving the illusion of perspective. Before we get started, it's important to give consideration to the type of clay you'll be using. Here's one of my favorites for carving, standard brand English porcelain number 365. It's a very smooth non-grog clay that has little tooth and is very forgiving if you need to change direction. The design I'll be carving will have some very detailed areas, so using a clay without any gritty grog will result in clean, fine lines. You don't have to carve on white porcelain. Here's a dark brown clay that would work well for this process that's also very smooth. The most important thing is that you choose a clay that has no grog in it. Tip number two is to wait until the clay is leather hard before carving. If you try and draw or carve into fresh clay, the tools will gouge the surface and the soft clay will make it impossible to get sharp details. If you wait until the clay is bone dry, you can easily draw on the surface, but if you try and carve the surface, the clay will splinter and flake off, resulting in choppy lines. Leather hard clay is perfect for low relief carving. You can draw easily on the surface with little impression. You can easily control how deep to make the cuts and you can still burnish smooth uneven areas of the clay. The trick is to control the drawing process. One way to do this is to use a damp box which has a layer of plaster in the bottom which wicks and releases moisture for a slow drying. If you don't have a damp box, lightly cover the piece in plastic to do the same thing. Tip number three, choose tools that work for you. Every design will have different needs and as such will require specific tools. Sometimes you might benefit from commercial high-end tools, but many times you can use common household items or homemade tools. For instance, here's a simple popsicle stick that I cut off the end of. Here's a piece of recycled aluminum that Jim fashioned. Here's one of my favorites, it's a sewing machine needle that I pushed into a cork. I do fine detail work with that. I also use commercial tools like these really cool diamond core tools. They cost a bit more, but they can really make a difference to the professionalism of the piece. These paddle type of carving tools are also commercial. They're affordable and made specifically for modeling and defining edges. After I've cleaned up the piece, I begin to sketch out the design around it. I have a general idea as to what I'm going to outline, but not too specific. The beauty of carving on clay is that as the idea takes shape, you can change the characteristics as you go. The point is be flexible, let your imagination take over. A carved piece rarely turns out as you initially envision it in your mind. Once I'm happy with it, then I'm going to use this flat paddle type of tool to define the edges. During this stage, I'm concerned just about creating a depth which involves an almost 90 degree angle along the outline to the outer surface, and a 45 degree angle from that cut upward into the negative spaces. To do this, I need to hold the paddle tool at a correct angle to achieve the goal. The result should be a gradual beveling around the imagery. Notice that I pay attention to which areas I want to project and which areas that will recede. The positive areas inside the leaves I want to protrude, and the areas around the leaves are the negative spaces that will be recessed. To create perspective and the illusion of depth on the flat surface, I intentionally drew leaves which overlap the others. As the clay is hard, it should cut like a hard cheese where it comes off in thin strips. The edges may look a bit ragged right now, but because the clay is still moist, I can burnish and clean it up later. Carving into curved areas can be tricky. I'm trying to keep the piece in one position for the camera, but don't be afraid to put the piece in your lap. This way, you can turn it around to make the carved lines that you need, while still keeping your tool at the correct position to keep the angles consistent. Once all the outlining is complete, I work on softening hard edges and leveling out the very severe beveled angles to begin the modeling of the design. I've found it easiest for me to use the back side of my paddle tool to begin this process. This side of the tool is curved outward so that it gently scrapes away unwanted edges without gouging further into the clay. Notice that the clay is still ragged. Now, don't worry about that right now. I just want to get rid of the sharper edges in the negative spaces. Once you've whittled down the severe edges, I use a damp sponge over the negative spaces. Try to avoid using the sponge on the protruded areas of your surface, as you don't want that to recede. This will not only take away the clay crumbs, but slake down the sharper parts of the curved edges. I use gentle strokes for this process because my porcelain melts away like a hot knife and butter. For the tighter areas of the negative space, I switch over to a damp paintbrush to do the same thing. Now, here's an example of a leaf that folds over itself. To create the proper depth needed to create this illusion, I would need to carve so deep that I would break through the vase. To avoid having to do that, add a little extra clay over the area and then begin carving it away. Note that you may need clay that's the same dryness as the leather hard vase, so that it doesn't crack off during drying. Also notice that I'm changing the tool to a rounded and angled paddle tool, which will ride along the clay and aid in the smoothing process. At this point, I continue to turn the piece around, slowly adding and subtracting clay in the areas that need it. When I have the hard edges graduated like I want, I like to make sure everything is level with no hard edges or bumpy surfaces. Again, I use a damp sponge or brush and work on smaller sections at a time. I dampen an area and then with my finger, I swipe it over the surface, thus taking out any bumps. For this leafy design, I thought it needed a focal point, so I sculpted a little bird out of clay and let it set up to leather hard. Before it gets too dry to attach, I scored and slipped it to the surface above one of the leaves. To create a nice bond between the two, I used a wet paint brush along the seam. Once that dries a little, I'll carve detail into the bird. In the meantime, I continue to smooth especially along the edges, so I can further carve along areas where the leaf will turn, like this. To further create depth and dimension between the positive and negative spaces, I switch to this curved spear-shaped tool and use the sharp edge to carve deeper under the edges of the imagery that I really want to separate out from the negative spaces of the vase. This is called undercutting. Now I still need to carve detail into the leaves themselves. For the design I envision, I need a tool that will create gouging to create the texture I'm looking for. This diamond core tool with the sharp v-shaped blade is perfect. I began by dividing the leaf into two sections by gouging a line right down the center. Then I took the tool and created random tightly spaced gouges in towards the center line, all the way down the right side of the leaf. This tight texture will give movement and interest to otherwise static shapes. The leaf becomes much more dynamic. If I were to do this on the left side too, the design would become too busy. So on the left side of the leaf, I made more spaced outlines sloping inward towards the center vein. I continue working in the same pattern for each leaf around the vase. As my bird's begun to dry out, I need to go ahead and begin carving the detail into him before he becomes bone dry. A damp paintbrush can soften the hard edges and transform them into soft feathers. This is where the sewing needle stuck in a cork comes in handy. As the water dampens the bird, I need him to dry more before adding more detail, so I'll try and be patient. Back to the leaves, I continue the process of carving and softening the hard edges until they're smooth yet flowing. Now there's one more technique I want to demonstrate for achieving the illusion of depth. This smaller leaf here is farther back than the rest of the leaves, so to make it read as such, I need the details on the leaf to be smaller than the rest. Instead of using the diamond core carving tool, I just use the sharp spearheaded tool to make smaller gouged out lines, like so. And then I use the same tool to undercut the area between the bigger leaves and the smaller leaves. Now back to the bird, I added more layers of carved feathers and I decided he needed a little clay for a leg so that he could perch on the leaf. I continued working on the details of the all carved, cleaned up, and ready for a slow drying before the bisque fire. If you liked our video, please tell us. We'd love to see the comments, the likes, the shares, and if you'd like to see more of our videos, please subscribe to the channel. Thanks so much and see you next time in the studio.