With so many ways to use ceramics in your personal and professional life, you may have found yourself wanting to try your hand at creating some ceramic projects yourself to see if you enjoy the process of throwing and firing your own creations. However, if you don’t have experience with this, getting started can be a bit intimidating. Luckily, with just a little guidance, anyone with an interest in ceramics can easily get started with this hobby.
To help you learn how this can be done, here are three tips for trying ceramics for the first time.
Maintain Good Form And Technique
While the idea of starting with ceramics may be fun and exciting, if you don’t have the right form and technique when you’re throwing clay on a pottery wheel, you can quickly start to feel it in your body. Without the proper support, sitting at a pottery wheel can lead to a lot of stress and fatigue in your body. But if you know how to have good form and proper technique, you can avoid a lot of these physical issues.
Ideally, you should brace your elbows against something while you’re throwing. For many people, it works to brace their elbows against their hips. You can also brace one elbow on your body and have another one resting on the splash pan of the pottery wheel if that’s more comfortable for you.
Learn How To Use Your Tools
When you’re first starting out with throwing pottery and doing ceramics, you might just want to use your hands to get the basic shapes. But once you’re ready to do a little bit more with the ceramics you’re making, you’re going to want to know how to use the right tools for the right jobs.
To get your pottery off the wheel, you can use a piece of cut off wire to help you get it up. You can also use a sponge to help you keep the right amount of water in your clay and use a sponge on a stick to get water from the inside of deeper ceramics. Wooden ribs and pin tools can also be used to help with smoothing the clay and making interesting designs. But to get good with these tools, you’ll need lots of practice.
Get Consistent With The Basics First
People can make some amazing ceramics using a pottery wheel. But before you try to bite off more than you can chew, it’s wise to get consistent with the basics first. Once you’re able to create a uniform set of something simple like six mugs, you can feel confident that you’re ready to move on to more advanced pieces and techniques.
If you want to try your hand at ceramics for the first time, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you begin.
