I Made THINGS!

Yes!  Day #3 at the wheel has shown a dramatic increase in the thing-ness of what comes out!  LOOK!

Isn't it amazing?  They are pretty much in chronological order, so you can see at first I was still making wobbly cylinders, and then I made bowls, and then I made a PLATE!

Some close-ups:

The plate (above).  You can see it's actually quite thin!  Even though it's not perfect I think it's pretty amazing.  After I made it, I stood up and said out loud, "I made a plate!!!"  The other students in the studio weren't as excited as me, but whatever.  You can't tell from the photo but I would say it's about 6" diameter - pretty small.

This was probably the best bowl I made.  Assuming it survives the firing, it would be a good little serving bowl (it looks bigger in the photo than it really is).

A shot from above.  How pretty!

The instructor told us last class to think about the design of the objects and to really take advantage of the plasticity of the clay by making it into weird shapes and not just making boring round bowls and plates.  However, this is not the way that I work.  First, I try to do really well at the basics before I start messing with the shapes.  I feel like if you make it badly and then make a weird shape out of it, you're just covering up how badly you made it ... which is kind of obvious to me.  I saw some of the work done by people in the beginner's class, either my class or the other one, and they did shape it into interesting shapes, but the sides were so thick and uneven.  They looked all right but obviously not good bowls, just interesting ceramic pieces.  So my goal is to make good bowls, and maybe I will make interesting bowls once I learn how to make good ones.

I wish I had started learning the wheel earlier because honestly this is the most fun I've had in the class so far!