Hand-Build a Bowl from slabs of clay (Handbuilding Pottery Tutorial)

Hi guys, welcome to this week's video. Today I'll show you how I make these bowls from a flat slab of clay. Now since the time I've posted this on my Instagram, I've had so many of you ask me how I made these from slabs. So I thought I'll let you in on the secret today. And the secret is another bowl, a very commonly found ramen bowl and a piece of cloth. That's about it. Let's get started. All right, we start with a slab of clay. This is rolled to a quarter of an inch thickness. It's a stoneware, white stoneware clay. I've already rolled it to quarter of an inch thickness. I'm going to start with first compressing the clay. This is my first step in any hand building project, however big or small it is. Always start with compressing. If your clay is recycled clay, all the air bubbles will come up to the top and you can get rid of them here. And if it's fresh clay like this one, just smoothen out the texture. You can add your own. Also remember for this project, it's important to have a clay which is soft. So this is not freshly rolled out, but it is a pretty soft clay and that's what we need for this project today. So once I have compressed, I just lift it from the board to make sure it's not sticking on there. Now the next thing I'm going to do is add texture. But before I do that, I'm going to mark out how much I need, where exactly I need my texture to be. And for that, what I'm going to use is a GR pottery form. This is about nine and a half inches in diameter. You don't need a GR pottery form for this. All you need is a nine and a half inch circle. Actually a nine inch circle would also do. But I have this, so I'm just using this. It's easy for me. I'm just placing it here, marking out where I need my texture to be and just lifting it away. You do not need this for this class. This is just for the circle template that I need. The next thing is to add texture. I think I'll go with this placemat. So I'm just going to place it here, press it down with my hands first and then using a pony roller or a brayer. Then I'll just press, go over the clay surface, pressing the texture in. Now because the clay is soft, it's quite likely that the placemat will stick to the base, to the clay underneath. So right now I'm just making sure that it's all nicely embedded in clay so I get the texture that I need. All right, that's a relief. It looks wonderful. The next thing I'm going to do is lift it and release it from the board again before I cut it out. Because once you cut out then it will be difficult to, you can still lift it, it's just that you'll be damaging, you'll be messing up the edges. And now I'm just trying to see here's the center. I'm just trying to place this kind of in the center so I get a more symmetrical bowl. Because this texture has kind of, some kind of direction, it makes sense to be a little bit more careful. But if it's just a plain feel of texture then you don't need to be that, you know, careful. So I'm just taking a needle tool and cutting straight. So that is done. I'm going to save this clay on the side because we will need this for the foot ring. And then just lift this off. The next step is to use this bowl. Now this is a ramen bowl, it has a little bit of foot ring and that's okay because we're going to do something to add a little bit of cushioning here. But this is what you'll need and some kind of release. I'll be using a piece of this plastic to just cover it so that, you know, it's all covered and this does not stick to this because this is already a fired and glazed surface. It's not absorbent. This clay is going to stick to it if you don't add any kind of release or some kind of release medium in between. This is going to be my release medium. All right, I'm going to just move this onto another work board, lifting with both hands and then lightly placing it. And then I'm going to bring in my banding wheel, a work board, on top. And then I bring my bowl and I'm going to place my plastic, make sure it's all covered. There you go. Just make sure that all the sides are covered, that's all, so that there's something in between the sticky surface and our clay. The next step is to add some kind of cushion on top so that this foot ring doesn't cut through the clay. Now if you have a bowl which does not have a foot ring, that's wonderful, you know, that's the best thing. But these kind of bowls usually, the one that, you know, I'm using, the ramen bowls, usually will have a foot ring here. And so we'll be adding some kind of cushion here at the top. So that all you need is a little bit of cloth, a small piece of cloth. So I just take some cloth, this is just an old sheet, fold it a couple of times so that there's a little bit of, you know, cushioning that I can add. This is a piece of thick cloth, making sure that the, you know, foot ring is completely covered and there's a little bit of margin on the side. Now I'm going to bring in my slab with the extra side facing up. I'm going to try and place it in the center. This is going to be a little bit tricky. Do not press because if you start pressing you're going to start thinning the clay there. So now once you've kind of found your center, we're going to start compressing the clay slab so it conforms to the shape of the bowl. And that's why we needed a clay slab which was soft. Alright, so now what we do is, just don't press on this. I'm just holding it there but I'm not pressing. You start pressing your clay slowly, trying to conform it to the shape of the bowl. Now this is not going to happen in one go around the bowl. This will take you a couple of slow maneuvering of the clay. So don't worry about that. It will look tricky Slowly just keep going around and if you see that the clay is of course this is bigger than the bowl. So I'm going to start lifting the edges slightly like this, just a little bit so that it gives the rest of the clay some room to find the form, the bowl form. So I'm going to just do this, just lifting it a little bit at the edges. Now you'll start seeing a little bit of the superficial cracking coming in here. Again, make sure you're not pressing it, that's all. A little bit of that is going to happen. So now I'm going to start pushing with both hands onto the clay and start pressing it in a little bit this way, then a little bit this way. It's okay, you will see clay kind of pushing down. When you try to push one side, it will try to lift up from the other. That's okay, that's bound to happen. But you just keep going slowly. Okay, it's better than where it was earlier. Now what you do is, again, where you have extra folds, just lift the clay up a little bit so that you can find some place to stick to the bowl. So the last thing what I start doing is, once I have a little bit of the form coming along, I'll start pressing the clay, making sure that it kind of sticks to the rim of the bowl and the board underneath. So again, you're being very gentle with the clay, you're not being very pushy. It's a nice soft pressure that you keep adding and you keep doing this slowly in small increments rather than going, you know, trying to push the clay along in just one go. That's never going to help. Just slowly. So for projects like these which you haven't tried before or which seem a little tricky, also what I'm trying to do is, I'm trying to kind of compress it slightly upward so that if there's any pressure here, it's taken care of. All right, what I was saying was, if you're trying to do some projects which seem a little bit more challenging than the others, start with something small, with a smaller bowl, with a smaller piece, get used to the process, understand what the process is like and then do something bigger. This is a medium-sized project, I'd say. You know, I can still hold the bowl in my two hands. Okay, so I'm just pressing it now. If you see, at the edge, it's much better than where we started, right? It's improved definitely. Also, if you see these little bit of superficial cracks, just take a damp sponge. Damp sponge, not drippy sponge and kind of go over the clay, add a little bit of moisture back in and get rid of the superficial cracking. Okay, so now once you have this form, now with a needle tool, I'm going to just take care, I'm not going exactly at the rim, just slightly away from the rim, taking care of this excess clay. I'm not trying to find my rim yet, I'm just taking care of this excess clay. The skirt, as I say, as I call it, so I'm going to get rid of the skirt and then start pressing the clay closer to the rim of the bowl. Okay, so and you reduce this, you do this slowly in steps, don't try to do everything in one go because it's quite possible that you'll completely miss the rim, you'll cut more than you need to, like I know I've cut more than I should have over here. While I'm trying to explain it to you, I do, it's wonderful. Okay, so we just get rid of that and now we start the process of pressing this against the bowl again. I think there is a little bit of margin there. Again, I'm just taking both my hands and pressing it just at the rim. Yes, you will get rid of a little bit of texture there but don't worry about it, that's not going to matter because you're obviously going to cut that off. Okay, I think that looks much better. Also, I can see that I have cut off more than I should on this side, so what I'm going to do is because my clay is still pretty soft, I'm just going to take a little bit of, you know, the clay that we just cut out and put it back here to fill it up because even if it was a plain bowl without any texture, it wouldn't matter and it has texture on it, it still won't matter because it will look like it's some part of the texture. So I'm not too worried about that but now I've kind of put that chunk there and try to fix it to a certain extent. All right, so once you have that, now just press around your base nicely to make sure it's as close to the bowl as possible. Okay, and now because you're doing so much pressing, it's easier for us to do this because we know that there is a plastic inside. Now I'm going to cut close to the rim. All right, very lightly hold the bowl, don't press from the top, just hold on to it and cut along the rim. Again, if you're not sure where the rim exactly is, take it slow, take it easy, do not try to do the whole thing like the clean cut in one go. This will take a couple of go-overs, that's okay. So now before I do anything else, I'm going to just go around with a damp, just dampen my hands on the sponge. I'm just going to go over on the rim, close to the rim and just press it, press the clay so that it can conform to the shape of the rim, so that it stays there. You're going to let this sit on this form for some time till it sets up. Before that, we'll add the foot ring. You can make a foot ring with a foot maker which is a tool which looks something like this, basically a corn cob holder. It usually has one side big, one side small. I just cut off the other side and open it a little bit and becomes this foot ring maker, foot ring thing. So either you can use this or you can just take, I'm going to take a strip of, measuring strip, whatever you call it, cut it here and cut it here. Okay, so I have a strip of clay. I'm not sure this is going to be enough but it does have texture on one side, it's okay, doesn't matter. Just make sure that you cut it at a bevel on the two sides so that you can make it into a ring and join it like this, okay? But before I join, I'm going to find my place where I'm going to place my foot ring and okay, I think that looks good. So what I'm going to do is, I usually use a serrated rib dipped in water because my clay is so soft, I can get away with not adding extra slip. I'm actually generating slip right now. So I'm going to take my serrated rib, dip it in water and then go over the, I'm actually going over the foot that is already there from the bowl. So it's easy for me, kind of gives me the place to put my own foot ring. Again, don't press too hard, just score the surface enough, add slip if you need to. I will usually just use, you know, wet serrated rib and go with that. Okay, that's done. Again, I'm going to do the same thing over here for the foot ring. Just dip it in water, the serrated rib and then go over and score the side and this generates enough slip on the strip. Now we just place it here, okay? I'm going to cut this because I'm just making a rough cut for now, okay? And then lightly pressing here so that it stays there where we've already scored. So it attaches to it, okay? Just go around and then we line the two up and then just make a cut here. Make the cut at the bevel so that we can flip and score the two sides and attach them. This will usually be bigger than what, longer than what you need. So I just take a little bit off. Again, I will take my serrated rib, dip it in water, slip, add, score it here, okay? Push the two together. Make sure you join this properly because I've had many pieces where, you know, the foot ring wasn't properly joined and there was a crack there and sometimes, very rarely, but that crack can extend to the pot as well. So make sure that this is joined well before you kind of do anything else. Once that's done, I'm going to go around just pressing it very lightly to the base because I don't want the clay to get through, okay? Once I've done that, then I'll take my silicone tip tool, rubber tip tool, and then from the side at the join, just go around. That takes care of the scoring marks as well as any slip that's outside and it's able to join here. I do the same on the inside like this. You can see it's taking care of the slip marks. Any slip that's come out, all of that is taken care of. Another thing you can do is just sit down to the table level, to the level of your pot and see if your foot ring is centered or not, right? You can always do that and then I'm going to take my finger and clean out the excess. Spend a couple of minutes here playing with the foot ring and having a binding wheel to do this makes it a lot easier, okay? And once I'm happy with the way it looks, just a damp sponge, a quick swipe. Again, do not press any of the things here because your clay is soft and it is sitting on a foot ring and it's a fairly decent size foot ring underneath so just be aware of that. Okay, so I have the pot here. I think it looks okay. Now, the last thing I'll do is bring in a smaller bowl, just place it on top and give it a couple of light taps to make sure that the foot ring is flat. All right, I think that looks good. Now, we let this sit for a couple of, for some time depending on how hot or humid your studio is. I think I'll be, I'll have to let it sit for about an hour before it's ready to take off from the mold. All right, now this has been sitting out drying for a little over an hour, more than an hour. This looks pretty stiff now that I can actually take it off the mold. So, what I'm going to do is bring another board, place it on top of this and then hold it on and flip. Now, to remove the bowl, first we'll just pull out the plastic a little bit, just pull it out. That's giving a little bit of, it's creating a little bit of margin around the edge there. I am trying. Okay, that's easy. It happens at a certain angle. Okay, now that and then we remove the plastic and that's a cloth and that's a bowl. That's a bowl, oops, that's a bowl, right? It's not complete yet. So, what we're going to do is first complete, clean up the inside. Now, you can see all of these marks because of the plastic and the way we compress the clay, right? This is the right moisture level that you want the clay to be at. So, what I'm going to do is, first is with my hands, I'll see whatever I can. Again, just stamping my fingers on the sponge, whatever I can take care of. If there's anything I can push, I'll just test my clay, check how soft or hard my clay is. I see that, you know, it doesn't have enough of a give but I don't know if you can see this. Now, I'm just pushing this. It's kind of cleaning up a little bit of the mess in here. Then, you just take a damp sponge and you start cleaning up. First, we clean up on the inside. Just clean up, make sure that you get all these marks very lightly with a damp sponge. Not drippy wet sponge, just damp sponge. Squeeze the sponge. Slowly go around the inside of the bowl to get rid of all of these marks. Now, what we'll do is, I want to add a string of beads on the edge, on the rim. That's my plan. That's what I want to do. Make it extra fancy. So, for that, I'm going to use a silicon mold. The silicon mold that I'll be using. What I'm going to do is, because my clay is really soft, I'm going to add a little bit of cornstarch to make sure that it releases the clay and you do need soft clay for it to get the best result. So, add a little bit of cornstarch here so that the clay doesn't stick. Once you've added the cornstarch, now for the strip, I'm just cleaning off the texture and then cutting straight edge. A thin strip. You don't need a very thick strip. And then, just pressing this along. Making sure it's kind of sitting inside the mold. I'm not pressing too hard. I'm pressing pretty lightly actually because I'm scared that this is going to stick. Then, just peel it off like this. So, that's your one string. You'll need more than one at least. I think we'll need to make at least three of these. Again, I'll add a little bit of cornstarch with a brush. So, that's our string of beads, pearls, whatever. Now, what I'm going to do is just cut these off straight like this along this edge. I'll do the same with these two as well. Okay, so that's all our beads. Now, I'm going to just turn them around and score them. Again, dipping my sated ribbon water. I'm going to score these. Because my clay is really soft, I can get away with adding no extra slip without adding any extra slip. So, we do that and these are ready now to go. I'll bring this guy here. Now, if you see this part, oh it's still soft. There's a little bit of an edge around it. It's not a flat edge, right? There's a little bit of flat there. So, I'm going to get rid of that. Flatten off the top completely and then add this. Now, to flatten it off, it's going to be the same thing. Serrated rib, dipping water. See, I'm just flattening it off. That's why I wasn't too bothered about cleaning the rim because I wanted to add the extra fancy beads to it. But if you don't want to do that, you can just clean up the top here with a damp sponge and you're done. Because I dip it in water, I have enough slip that's generated right at the edge here. Also, what this is doing is this is flattening the edge. Yeah, I think that's a lot of scoring. Now, I'm going to take my string here, place it here and then for this one, I have to start pressing in between the the curly things. I press between the two. Can you see? Let me just show you. Right, and I'm just pressing here in between these two. Okay, so that's one done. Now, I'm going to quickly add a little bit of scoring to this one and this one. That's what it looks like at this moment. We're going to quickly clean it up because this is all nice and soft, especially the clay that we just used. I'm going to blend it all in. You can use your hands. Just press this down, blending it with the rim here. While I'm doing this, I'm also holding on from the outside, making sure that it's not really going out of shape. Basically, I'm blending this with the bowl. You can see here, I am blending this here like this, completely blending it with the bowl. So, you don't know where it starts, where it ends. We will clean it up but right now, the idea is to just make sure that both of them are blended from the inside and then the outside. We'll do this a couple of times. So, once I have kind of blended it, then I'm just going around cleaning it up a little bit with a damp sponge. Keep cleaning your fingers on it and then continue pressing it down. Okay, so that's done. Now, I'm going to do the same thing on the outside where I'll be pressing this down. You will lose a little bit of texture on the rim and that's okay. Then, with the damp sponge, you can go over and clean it up very lightly. The idea is to make sure that the edge is blended. I do take my time with these things because they're important. The finish of the pot is extremely important. Okay, let me just show it to you what this looks like. You can see it's all nice and clean but we're not done yet. We still have a little bit of work with the bead thingies. So, I'm going to now, if you see, there's a little bit of unevenness here. So, it's time to clean that up. For that, I'm going to take my silicon tip tool and again, in between these balls, I just go in and swipe. This is pressing it down as well as cleaning off the, making it smoother and highlighting the shape. Just give me one. I'll just do a couple of these and I'll show you the profile from the side so you'll understand what I mean. Now, these are the ones which are done. Just these four, I'll just show you from a closer. You can see these four look a lot more finished compared to the rest of them. Even from the side, you can actually see that. Right, that's the idea here. Just take some time to go through each of these. It's fairly individual. I think it's up to you how much effort you want to put in a pot and if you're selling your pot, it's important to know that what is the price you can get for a pot like this in the market that you sell for your customers. It's important to know that. While you can make some pieces just because you enjoy making them and trying them out, it's also good to know what your customers are willing to buy for and also how much time you're investing. Once you've done that, now I go in with a damp sponge and first from the outside, just rolling the damp sponge, getting rid of any cake crumbs. This is actually quite a therapeutic process if you're not in a hurry to finish your pot. I'm just trying to finish it before the sunlight gets here but clearly it's too late for that. Okay, so I'm just cleaning this all up. You can see how the look of the pot changes as soon as you do that little. You spend five minutes extra on your pot and the look changes substantially. So once I've done that, I'm going to just go around cleaning up the edge here one last time making sure it's all nice and smooth without any cake crumbs. So that's our bowl. Let me just show you. That's our bowl. I think it looks really cute. So that was the class. I hope you found it useful and learned something new. I think it's important to kind of keep an open mind and an open eye towards the things that we have commonly lying around and find ways to use them to make the forms that we do. Of course, if you're somebody who works on the wheel, it's different. You can probably make a round bowl in no time but if you're working with slabs like I do, I always look for things I can use to form different shapes to help me get the shape and size and the form that I want. It is a bit of work and it's a bit of challenge sometimes to find this but when you're able to make something as beautiful as this, I think it's always worth the effort. So that's all I have for you this week. All the tools and materials that I used will be listed along with this bowl will be listed in the description with the video. I hope you learned something new and enjoyed the class. I'll see you in the next one.