Making shapes with clay
Art & Design · Key Stage 1 · The School
Basic moves
Clay can be ROLLED into a ball or a sausage. It can be PINCHED between finger and thumb to make a pot. It can be PRESSED flat into a slab. And it can be POKED with a tool. Those four moves make almost everything at this stage. Doing each one once is a good way to start.
Making joins stay
Press two pieces of clay together and they fall apart when dry. To join them properly, SCORE both surfaces. That means scratching criss-cross lines into them. Then add a little water or slip. Then press firmly. Potters have done this for thousands of years. It is the difference between a handle that stays on and one that does not.
Texture
Clay takes an impression of anything you press into it. A leaf. A fork. A shell. String. A button. Press objects into a flat slab and you get patterns you could not draw. Roll something across the surface and you get a repeating one. This is the easiest way to make clay work look considered.
Roll three identical clay tiles. On the first, press in a piece of hessian or a leaf, then lift it away. That is an impression. On the second, scratch a pattern with a stick. That is incising. On the third, roll thin coils and press them on. Score and slip them first. That is adding. Three surfaces. Three techniques. One material. And now you can choose, instead of just squeezing.
Clay is wet earth. As the water leaves it, the clay SHRINKS. A pot comes out a little smaller than you made it. That shrinking is also why work cracks. If one part dries faster than another, the dry part pulls away from the wet part. Then it splits. Thin edges and thin handles dry first. So they crack first. Dry your work slowly, away from a radiator and out of direct sun. That gives the whole piece time to shrink together. A cracked pot is almost never bad making. It is usually fast drying. Knowing that is the difference between being disappointed and fixing it next time.