Expressive Figure Cups

Saturdays in January 9-30, 3:00PM-6:00PM with Jamie Westermeyer

Create a cup with a personality! In this four-week handbuilding class, students will transform a functional ceramic vessel into an expressive sculptural figure. Using handbuilding and pinching techniques, students will construct a cup and develop it into a character through sculpted facial features, hair, ears, expressions, and other details. We’ll explore how exaggeration, proportion, texture, and surface can be used to create personality while maintaining a functional vessel. Students will finish their pieces with underglaze and glaze during the final week.

Saturdays in January 9-30, 3:00PM-6:00PM with Jamie Westermeyer

Skill Level: Two (Beginner-Intermediate)

Requirements: Intro to Handbuilding and at least one other handbuilding class or similar experience

Create a cup with a personality! In this four-week handbuilding class, students will transform a functional ceramic vessel into an expressive sculptural figure. Using handbuilding and pinching techniques, students will construct a cup and develop it into a character through sculpted facial features, hair, ears, expressions, and other details. We’ll explore how exaggeration, proportion, texture, and surface can be used to create personality while maintaining a functional vessel. Students will finish their pieces with underglaze and glaze during the final week.

Week One:

• Bring in images of silly faces, serious faces, etc…

• Intro to the project and examples

• Building the basic cup form through slab/pinch construction

• Creating the initial head/figure form

Week Two:

• Building and creating expressive features

• Sculptural attachments

• Handles and other functional elements

• Developing individual character

Week Three:

• Refining, cleaning, and strengthening features and attachments

• Adding texture and surface details

• Final construction and finishing

• Preparing work for bisque firing

Week Four:

• Layering and blending underglazes

• Using color to emphasize sculptural features

• Glaze application

Included with class:

• 15lbs of cone six stoneware clay

• Use of studio underglazes

• Firings of all work made during the course

• Studio access outside of class time during the following hours:
  Monday-Thursday 9:00AM-9:00PM, Friday-Sunday 10:00AM-6:00PM

You will need to bring:

Pictures of expressive faces for the first class!!

Your tools! Rubber ribs (Mudtools yellow or red), Needle Tool, Serrated Rib, Metal Knife

Recommended you bring:

Cheap Chopsticks, Any specific underglaze colors you'd like to use that the studio does not. have