Pottery Pitcher: Centering Clay

Video Transcript

O.k. so centering this lump of clay for our pitcher is a very important part; if we can get it on center it's going to mean that the pot is going to be easily thrown. So what I like to do first when I'm centering a lump of clay is get my hands nice and wet, and get the lump nice and wet. Now before I do anything I like to push down on the clay; hold it with this part of my hand here and just push it onto the bat here to make sure that the clay is nice and attached to the bat and as you can see we've done that. Now we're going to start centering; centering is the process of drawing the clay up and pushing it back down, I'm going to be using this part of my right hand to; to push the clay onto center. As you can see I have it; I have it kind of positioned in, in my gut here and this is going to mean that it won't go anywhere; it's secured by my body, I'm going to use this part of my hand to then push the clay down. So first we're going to start by raising the clay and I'm just using both sides of my hand here to squeeze the clay; you can see I've squeezed it up into a cone and I'm going to use this part of my hand to push it back down, and here we go. You can see it's already getting on center; now it's important to understand that we're not simply drawing the clay up the outside, we're actually pushing the clay up into itself through the middle and then back down. Even if you get it centered on the first; the first try you want to do this a few times to ensure that all the clay is centered on the wheel. Now this is something that takes a long time to; to really understand and get the hang of but don't let it, don't let that stop you from; from, from doing this it's a; it's something you want to do over and over again, and practice but once you get it it's like riding a bike. Just going to demonstrate it a few more times here so you can see what I'm doing; I'm going to exaggerate it, open my hands so you can really see what's really happening and back down. O.k. so now we have it fairly well centered; you can see my hand, my finger on the; on the clay there, it's not tapping; last thing we want to do is take one of our rib tools and trim away any excess on the bottom, it's going to help us when it comes time to throw. Now we have a nicely centered lump of clay and in the next section I'm going to show you how to enter the form, and pull the form out to throw our pitcher and we'll be doing that in the next part of our lesson.

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