Making a Clay Bowl Bottom

Making a Clay Bowl Bottom
Okay, now that I have my concept, I'm going to take this wire cutter because I don't need to make a bowl that big. So, basically what I can do is just take this, you don't have to hold it this far out, but it helps if you've got a huge piece but, you can just take this and slice off a big chunk of the clay and it cuts it a lot easier than if you just try to rip it out with your hands. And so, I'm going to rip this in half now that I have a smaller piece. And you can get your fingers wet and just, if you want to just kind of squeeze the clay and see, it's already getting all over me, so that's part of the fun of clay. So, once I get it into a ball, it's almost like working with dough or something like that. I might add a little bit more water. And then, once I get it kind of warmed up, and a little bit softer, just kind of roll it back and forth, then I can start to kind of flatten it out. Use the palm of your hand and you want to keep, you can use your sponge as well to keep this a little moist so it doesn't stick to the plastic. And then it won't stick as bad, and then I just start to work it out with my thumbs, you can do it like that. If it starts to break off, you can just squeeze it back together and then flatten it back out. So, might need to make it a little bit bigger so I'll just take a little bit of clay and get a little water on there, smush these together, because I want to make it about three eighths to a half an inch thick on the bottom of the bowl. And then once I get it flat, then I can start to shape it. And I don't know if I want it to be, I don't know if I'm going to have it perfectly circular, it's going to be more like an oval. I'm getting texture from my plastic. Then once you get it close to the shape that you want, I might have put too much water, but that's alright. Just dry my hands off with the rag, and that's pretty much the shape of the bottom of the bowl. It looks a little rough right now, but then I can take my thumb and go around and shape it. And then this is a little bit thicker than I want, so I'm going to flatten it out. So now we have the bottom of the bowl.