INTRO TO CLAY• What is Clay?• What are the Stages of Clay?• What are some common

tools?• What is relief? Sculpture in

the round?

WHAT IS CLAY? a stiff, sticky fine-grained earth,

typically yellow, red, or bluish-gray in color and often forming an impermeable layer in the soil. It can be molded when wet, and is dried and baked to make bricks, pottery, and ceramics.

STAGES OF CLAY Stage 1: Raw Clay (Earthenware)

Stage 2: Plastic - This is the stage of clay that most of the work is done, like throwing it on the wheel. Plastic clay is soft and easily workable.

Stage 3: Leather Hard - This is the stage of clay that a pot is in when it's half-way dry

Stage 4: Bone Dry (or Greenware) --This stage is when the clay is in it's most fragile state; a tiny nudge could potentially knock the lip off of a bowl, or the handle of a mug.

-The most common destruction is when people pick up their pottery by a lip edge or handle and it breaks.

-Bone Dry clay is when the pot has been exposed to air and all of the water has evaporated out of the clay, and it is left completely dried out. This is the stage in which it is put, very carefully, into the bisque kiln.

Stage 5: Bisque - Bisqued clay is clay that has been fired in a kiln, but it is still porous enough to absorb water.

-In this stage, no additions can be added to the pot, and it is almost complete. -This is also the stage that you add glaze to the pot to prepare it for it's final firing.

Stage 6: Fired - After your pottery has been Bisqued, it needs to be fired again. There are lots of different types of final firing.

Common Tools

What is Relief Sculpture?

• To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that the sculpted material has been raised above the background plane.

• The technique involves considerable chiseling or carving away of the background, which is a time-consuming exercise with little artistic effect if the lowered background is left plain, as is often the case.

• On the other hand, a relief saves forming the rear of a subject, and is less fragile and more securely fixed than a sculpture in the round

High relief: carved deeply enough to suggest that the subjects are almost detached from the surface

Low relief: carved so that less depth is visible and the subjects still appear attached to the surface

WHAT IS SCULPTURE IN THE ROUND?

• free-standing sculpture, such as statues, not attached, except possibly at the base to any other surface

• instead of subtractive carving techniques, which remove material from an existing block or lump, artists use modellingtechniques which shape or build up the work from the material.

UNIT 1:PINCH POTS