Pottery Making Illustrated Articles (Simple)

Recently, I have seen a growing interest in slip casting. One of the great things about slip casting is that you can create a mold based on your own design, cast the piece, and implement the process into your work to create more consistent results.

So, before you set the table for tonight’s dinner, pull up a chair and settle into this issue of Pottery Making Illustrated.

Branding is the consistent way a business or person represents themselves to the public. The overall visual look of a brand should delineate one brand from another, much the same way one artist’s work looks different from another’s.

Illustrations of Potluck Dishes

A wide shallow bowl lends the potter a large surface area for expressive decoration. When in use, it can easily function as a focal point for a kitchen table top, the locus of offering and the center

I’ve always been drawn to pots with clean, elegant lines that can act as canvases, and I enjoy pairing them with glazes that mimic biological processes or the natural world. I spent several years work

My wrap vessels were inspired by my love of color and nerikomi, the Japanese technique of building forms with colored clay. My wrap vessel stemmed from my exploration with creating wrap-around rings a

Using nature as my inspiration, I infuse Chinese meaning into my pieces by celebrating the symbolism behind particular animals, plants, and flowers. In my current exploration, I seek to find balance b

While my work thus far has been mostly functional, I have always had a love for stand-alone pieces that are meant to be on display, such as a planter, fruit bowl, or vase. I also like to challenge mys

In order to adapt my thinking from the repetition of daily studio work to exploration mode, I need a shift of experience. Summer seems to be a particularly experimental time of year for me. The days a

I am inspired by vibrant, distinctive, and complex patterns, such as Islamic art patterns. As the viewer’s eye is captured by bold symmetry and an interplay of color, the potter may also experience a

Using the right tool for the job is always a good idea, but in ceramics, using the right brush is critical for creating certain marks on your pots. You’d have a difficult time trying to use a short fl

Everything comes with a price tag, including artwork. The artistic process is built on skills, education, experience, and creativity, all of which take time to develop. That said, outside your studio,

If you are looking for inspiration, the projects and techniques in the following pages have you covered. This issue delivers new ideas in glazing, mark making, Chinese brush strokes, stamping, masking

For me, making mugs is like eating comfort food. When the pandemic first hit, I found myself returning again and again to the mug form. When making a mug, there is a familiarity between maker and clay

Kilns Illustrated by Robin Ouellette

Food and clay have run together for eons, developing a relationship between families, forms, and flavors. Family gatherings often bring up nostalgic memories of the flavors of food, long tables surrou

Mountain vases are a series of coordinated small vases that can be used individually or arranged (and rearranged) in a series. The best part of this project is that each person making these vases crea

Both functional and decorative, my carved porcelain pots are created to be joyful, tactile containers for nature’s beauty. I am greatly inspired by the flowing forms of botanicals as well as the graph

Alchemy is the power or process of transforming something common into something special. This magic of alchemy that occurs within ceramics has been a continual source of interest and delight. Fascinat