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Are you heading in the right direction with your pottery?
170 Plays2 months ago
In this episode of Shaping Your Pottery, Nic Torres discusses how to know when you're heading in the right direction with your pottery. He shares his personal experiences, from learning to sculpt to creating fan art mugs, emphasizing the importance of enjoying the process and feeling excited about the end results. Nic highlights two key indicators: having fun while creating and repeatedly admiring your finished work.
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Transcript
Identifying Direction in Pottery
00:00:00
Speaker
How do you know when you're heading in the right direction with your pottery? You see, I asked this question a lot to the people I interview. I asked them, when was the moment you knew you were heading in the right direction with your pottery? And some people aren't able to answer this, right? Because sometimes it just happens kind of naturally and not necessarily paying attention. And other people, times people are paying attention. And they know that feeling of, like oh, I know exactly the moment when I knew I'm heading in the right direction with my pottery.
Joy in Learning Sculpting
00:00:29
Speaker
And for me, I can only speak about my experience. And it's happened a couple, it's happened twice for me at least. So the first time it happened was when I was first learning how to scope. Anything, right? I was learning how to i teach myself how to scope, and that was the first moment because at first I was just trying to sculpt because I thought it would just be kind of fun and I thought I would just kind of try to teach myself. And so I set my goal, set myself a goal to make or to scope something five minutes, 10 minutes a day. That's all it was that I was the goal to just learn how to scope.
00:01:07
Speaker
And then once I learned how to sculpt, it was a lot of fun for me and it was a lot of fun and I wanted to continue doing it. And so I continue doing it. I continue making these small magnets. I continue making these sculptures. I continue making all these other things with sculpture, especially figurative sculpture, right? It is more figurative type sculpture. That's the type of stuff that I enjoy. And that didn't happen because simply by doing the same thing over and over again it happened because I was trying something new and it had a feeling in my gut that it was just like it was fun for me and I just wanted to continue doing it more.
Exploration Through Fan Art
00:01:43
Speaker
The second example that kind of happened recently was that for a long time I was very against making
00:01:52
Speaker
fan art, I guess that's kind of what you call it. I was very against it because when you're making fan art, I thought that it's not truly your own style, right? and And that's kind of yes, that's kind of a point, but at the same time, it's also not. I'm going to make a different episode about this, this topic a little later, but could continue the story.
00:02:13
Speaker
was that I was a again, make a fan out for the longest time, but I wanted to start practicing more sculptural work onto my mouth because I was doing a certain type of sculptural work, but then I wanted to do with something different. And the sculpture I was doing was making was coming out way too thick, way too like bulky, and it was breaking really easily. So I wanted to try a different method, which is kind of a relief sculpture, but kind of not the same time.
00:02:34
Speaker
But I started trying these out and I started doing fan art, started doing, you know, things that I enjoy. Right. So I originally I was going to do a scorpion mug from Mortal Kombat. And then after watching Deadpool and Wolverine movie, I got really inspired to to make a Wolverine mug. And then I did a Deadpool and Wolverine mug. And after I made that that first Wolverine mug and after the the Deadpool and Wolverine mug came out of the kiln,
00:03:03
Speaker
I really, really liked it. Like normally, I don't know about you, but if I am excited about something or excited about i the way my pottery is looking, I will look at it over and over and over and over again. I'll look at my phone from the pictures I take. I'll look at it like in like in person, like when I'm downstairs trying to get my my my coffee or something. And I'll just look at all the details I did. Like, wow, that actually came out really, really good.
00:03:29
Speaker
And that's how I know I'm heading in the right direction with my pottery is if I keep looking back, going back and looking at it and looking at this stuff and feeling excited to look at it.
Revisiting Creations
00:03:40
Speaker
That is something I have felt very recently, and I'm going to get continue pursuing these and these Marvel character, these superhero characters, these anime characters that I'm going to make onto my mugs because I enjoy making them and I enjoy looking at them.
00:03:55
Speaker
You know, sometimes that's all you need is just that feeling that you enjoy looking at it for me is I'm going to look at it over and over and over and over again. It's been almost two weeks now since I made the Deadpool Wolverine mug and I'm still super jazzed about what I made because I think it came out so good. I just that's how you know. That's how I felt like I knew I was heading in the right direction with my pottery.
00:04:20
Speaker
That is how I knew simply the feeling is that it it just brought me excitement. It brought me joy when I looked at it, when I was making it. It just brought me a lot of joy. So that's why that's how I could tell that I'm going in the right direction.
Signs of Progress in Pottery
00:04:35
Speaker
I'm definitely going to continue doing this. But how can you tell for yourself? Like I said, I can only speak from my experience. The first experience is if you're having fun with the process. Right. That's to like that was the first story. That was the first example that I gave. I was I was having fun making sculptures.
00:04:51
Speaker
The second example is if you keep looking at it and every time you look at it, it brings you excitement or you look open the kiln and it brings you excitement when you open the kiln. You're like, yes, this is this is the direction I need to be going. So those are the two ways that I have found that I know I'm going in the right direction with my parties. If you're having fun and you enjoy looking at what you're making, you the final result looks how you almost want it and it it brings you a lot of joy to look at it.
00:05:19
Speaker
I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one.
Invitation to Subscribe
00:05:22
Speaker
hey thanks for listening this episode of shaping your pottery with nick torres if you want to ma the art of pottery and dive deeper into techniques of the pottersza interview i created a newsletter that does just that it dives deep into the techniques of the potters i interview if you want to learn more go to shapingourpoty dot com forward slash newsletter or click the link in the description to learn more