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#247 Learning to change up your pottery
38 Plays2 years ago
On this episode I will be explaining what I am doing to change up my own pottery and prevent boredom. Listen to this episode to learn more
The Questions we ask will determine how our pottery will look like that's why I created a Free 15 questions to help you discover your voice template go grab it here www.shapingyourpottery.com/questions
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Transcript
Influence of Questions in Pottery
00:00:00
Speaker
Real quick before we get started, did you know that the questions that we asked are going to determine what our pottery is going to look like and it's going to determine what our voice is going to look like? That's
Discovering Your Unique Pottery Voice
00:00:11
Speaker
why I created 15 questions that you can use right now to start discovering your own unique voice. Go to
Introducing Shaping Your Pottery
00:00:17
Speaker
shapingyourpottery.com forward slash questions to get this free booklet.
00:00:22
Speaker
If you love pottery and want to take your skills to the next level, you're in the right place. Find your own pottery style right here on Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. Let's get started. Instead
Combatting Boredom in Pottery
00:00:36
Speaker
of creating a whole new character, what I'm doing is just giving it a theme for that month. What I am doing to prevent boredom with my pottery. What is up Shaping Nation?
00:00:50
Speaker
This is Nick Torres here. For those that don't know me, it is my mission to help potters to discover their own voice with their pottery. And I do that by providing value through this podcast. So the number one thing that I think that I believe keeps people from finding their own unique voice is boredom.
00:01:10
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every potter
Refining Character Designs
00:01:11
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has faced this at some point in their pottery journey they for whatever reason we just get bored you know we are creative people we get bored of making the same thing over and over and over again and this has happened to everybody including me I'll give you a very quick story it's a very
00:01:31
Speaker
Recently on like over like last nine ten months or so I've been creating these characters where I sculpt them and I create my own character basically and For the first about six months I was refining the character and I kept refining and refining and refining and refining until I found The one design that I like and once I found that design I began making more and more and more and more of that design Because I want to be able to sell those
00:02:00
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as magnets and that's really one of the biggest goals is to sell that party that I'm making. I enjoy making it
Using Monthly Themes for Pottery
00:02:07
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but at the end of the day it's about making the money too as well. But anyway I digress. So I've been making these characters and you know day after day I'd make the same character, just change it up a little bit with different poses but because I'm making the same character it can get a little bit boring sometimes. And so
00:02:28
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every week I chat with my good friend Sarah Connor and we just pretty much just keep each other accountable and we help each other. We give each other ideas and we also give each other feedback on our ideas. So while we were having this discussion that we had once a week, I brought up the idea that I wanted to
00:02:50
Speaker
I wanted to change up or create a new character for my, you know, characters every single month so that one, I'm not getting bored, but two, it also kind of spice things up so that people aren't getting the same thing over and over and over again. And she gave me the idea to where I could just kind of pick like a little bit of a theme for my party so I could have, you know, a samurai or like,
00:03:17
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a spy or a ninja, whatever it was. And that was the idea she came up with. And that's
Maintaining Core Designs with Themes
00:03:23
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how I could come up with new characters by having themes like that. But instead of going that route, what I ended up doing and what I'm doing right now is instead of creating a whole new character, what I'm doing is just giving it a theme for that month. For example,
00:03:44
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The theme that I'm currently working on is 1920s. I want my character to look like 1920s. So what I'm doing is I made the character look like 1920s, but I still have one or two features that look the same as the original design. Think of it like a skin in a video game where you can have multiple skins, but the character is still the same. So the same power is sort of the same thing. And that's pretty much the direction I'm going. But we could also do that.
00:04:13
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with our pottery in general. It doesn't just have to be my characters. You could also do this for your pottery. Let's say, for example, you are making flower illustrations on your pottery. You know, maybe you make some, you typically make daisies, you stick to the same few flowers each time. Something that you could do to spice it up your pottery is choosing one or two flowers that you're going to focus on for that month.
00:04:36
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And then now
Spicing Up Creativity with Glazing Themes
00:04:37
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you have a variety of different things that you can do, instead of just doing the same thing over and over and over again, but at the same time, you are also sticking true to your vision, right? You don't have to go out and try to come up with a completely new different thing because you're bored. No, what you're doing is you're simply changing up one or two things, but keeping it almost looking the same.
00:05:03
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This is going to help your boredom so much because
00:05:06
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With boredom, it typically happens because you are doing the same things over and over and over again. It's very predictable. You know what's going to happen. So this will help you cure that boredom. And it also works if your pottery is a little bit more simple. Let's say if you just focus more on glazing, you want your glazes to look really good. You do the same thing as well. So maybe let's say you have the same few glazes or glaze combinations that you use for your pottery, which you can do instead.
00:05:35
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is one
Managing Ideas with Limited Themes
00:05:36
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you can either come up with new glazes and try that out for the month or you can add other things into to to your pottery to make the glaze looking better let's say for example you choose a theme slip
00:05:49
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slip is your theme that you're going to add to your glazes and that entire month you are just going to focus on doing different techniques with slip maybe you adding some patterns maybe you're adding some different designs whatever it may be slip is that theme for that month and now you're not going to get so bored you can also you don't have to pick just one you know theme for that month you could pick you know three five ten whatever but be have a word of caution the more themes you pick for that month
00:06:20
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The hardest is going to be to actually come up with new ideas to keep it pretty small. I would say maximum of three. Don't go above that for the for themes of that month. But anybody can do this with their pottery. And it's so important to also change up our pottery as well. Not only does it help us.
00:06:39
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grow
Planning and Listing Monthly Themes
00:06:40
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as our pot potters but also prevents that boredom and other people as well especially if you're selling your pottery they will start seeing different things but it still kind of looks the same so it looks like your pottery and this is a super simple way that you can start changing up your pottery if you're having a little bit of trouble right now thinking of themes new themes for your pottery try this thing out so we're going to grab a pen and paper
00:07:07
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And at the top of the paper, we're going to write, what do I make? And you're going to describe in a very brief sentence, what do you make? For example, I make sculptured characters. That is the things that I make. And so now you're going to list out 12 different themes. Why 12? Because well, they're 12 months in a year. And so you're now going to list out 12 different themes. For example, one of my themes is 1920s. Another theme that I want to do is an origin suit.
00:07:35
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Another theme that I want to do is a Viking or a gladiator or and then you write out all these different themes for your pottery. And now each month you have something new to try. Go give it a try. I hope you guys enjoy this episode. See you guys in the next one.