clay sculpture with mickey

Yesterday after EAES, Mickey and I headed to the Visual Art Education classroom to work on the second installment of my EAES Personal Arts Project; sculpture. Mickey generously donated some of his personal clay for the project.

As we worked on un-freezing the clay that had been sitting in his car for two days, we talked about the subject I wanted to sculpt. I was toying around with the idea of sculpting a horse, but I figured it was too difficult for a first try. Then Mickey suggested a turtle, as that was his first sculpture. I was excatic; you might remember an earlier post about the idea of getting a live turtle (which is still an idea and not yet reality).

Once enough clay was thawed, Mickey showed me how to kneed it. If you don't kneed the clay then the tiny pockets of air inside the clay will cause the sculpture to explode when it is being kilned. Then we started getting creative and began molding our turtles. Mickey stole some plastic forks and knives from Fast Break so we could make some designs on their shells, and eyes and a mouth. He showed me the 'snake'; rolling clay until it's in a long, thin line, then using that as the rim of the shell.

Mickey also informed me that things break of easily after they've been kilned, so to make sure anything I add on (the head, tail and flippers) were very sturdy. He said was a good idea to make little grooves in the area that I wanted to attach something (via the plastic fork) so the addition would stick. I finished by adding a hexagon pattern on my turtle's shell.

Now, I'm supposed to wait for one-two weeks (until the clay is completely dry) to kiln our turtles. After that, I can paint them or glaze it or leave it as is. Thanks Mickey for showing me another form of visual art!