Assignment 1: Part 2

(1/24/12) On the final day of sculpting I thinned out and centered the stem a bit more and tried to add a wood type texture like what was on the real pepper. The stem was still a bit thicker than the real pepper but it had to be about 3/4 an inch.

(1/24/12)  We hollowed out the insides of our sculptures so that they had a wall thickness of about 3/4 of an inch. My pepper is kind of long and skinny so there were a few parts hard to get to but not terribly hard. The clay was very stiff by this point and I ended up snapping on of my wooden tools removing the chunks of clay. We also made a little notch for air to flow in and out of the sculpture on the bottom. Mine is located on the bottom end of the pepper where it naturally raises up a bit anyways so it was pretty well disguised.

(2/2/12) We got our sculptures out of the kiln today. The pepper did not explode, yay! It was still very hot in this photo- probably the only time it will ever be a hot pepper.  :P

The next time we get together we will be painting them.

Assignment 1: Sculpting

(1/12/12)  I chose to do a jalapeno pepper for my vegetable.  After working the air bubbles out of the clay I got roughly a 10 inch long rectangle and drew in the outline of the pepper on the top and a side of the clay and started cutting off chunks to match the original pepper.

(1/12/12)  I left plenty of room around my original sketch lines so that I could subtract material slowly and more accurately. Here is an early above view.

(1/12/12- 1/17/12)  After about another hour of shaping the clay more accurately we wrapped the pieces up for the weekend. This is a photo I took when I came back the next time so the pepper looks a bit more dry. :P

(1/17/12) The real pepper started to kind of shrivel over the weekend too.. I took some photos of it for a reference in case it doesn't last much longer.

(1/17/12) Since the clay had dried and hardened a little more I was able to start shaping the bottom of it and making it look a little more three dimensional

(1/17/12) After a while it started looking more pepper shaped in the body. The stem still looked kind of blob shaped because I wanted to save it for last so that it would not break off or dry out any more than it had to.

(1/17/12) At the end of the day I sprayed down the pepper and wrapped it more tightly in the plastic bag so that it would dry out less until the next time I used it. (especially the stem) Here is my slimy, shiny, pepper.

(1/19/12) Forgot my phone and had to have someone else in class take a photo this day. I started sculpting out the stem today. It can't be the same because the stem would be way too long and thin and so I had to make it shorter and thicker. I spent a lot of time trying to round out some of the little details but there is probably still some work that needs to be done. I also started adding some detail to the bottom (or opposite side to stem?) of the pepper.