Free-Form Pots

Lachlan F

For our pottery piece this term we made free-form pots.

We started with slabs of clay, which we decorated by pressing on leaves and string to create a surface pattern. We then prepared small balls of clay to create the feet, before moulding the slabs over our knees (a technique that has been around forever, and is always such fun!) We attached the feet to the base while the slabs where still draped over our knees. The resulting pots have a great oriental-style look.

After bisque firing we spray painted the pots with a base coat of indian red - a rich metallic red-brown colour that is the perfect base for the bright colours we dribbled by wiping our loaded brushes against the rim of the pot. I advised the kids to choose 2 colours - I love the mandarine orange and ocean blue combination  that Lachlan has selected in the example above. The dribbles run unpredictably, and seem to fit well with the free-form shape of our pots.

In the time we had at the end of the pot-painting session, we made these cute snake finger puppets :)
I photocopied the templates from Mr Printables - great for cutting skills practice and lots of fun for a half lesson fill-in!