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#11 Model Other Potters
40 Plays3 years ago
On this episode of Shaping Your Pottery I talk about the power of modeling other potters. Modeling allows you to find your own way of making pottery. It allows you to find ways to suit you best and will help in the learning process.
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Transcript
Introduction and Invitation
00:00:00
Speaker
Sign up for my newsletter to never miss an episode. Click the link in my description right
Finding Your Pottery Style
00:00:04
Speaker
now. Welcome to Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how you find your style of pottery. What works for you, what you want to make your pottery look like and create. Now, when we first start this pottery game, this pottery life,
00:00:29
Speaker
We all go through this process of what we want to make our pottery look like. And not only that, we also want to find ways to really make pottery our own way, find ways to make pottery easier for us so that it's just more enjoyable. And we all go through this process of trying to really find ourselves and find our own pottery.
00:00:59
Speaker
And you really need to kind of think about things, how you really want your potter to look like.
Copying vs. Modeling in Pottery
00:01:09
Speaker
For example, I didn't really know what I wanted my potter to look like. So what I did was I would model a whole bunch of different potters. I probably chose about 10 different potters and I modeled
00:01:29
Speaker
their pottery. I didn't copy. Copying and modeling are two different things. Copying is like, for example, if you're writing a paper and you have a website for information, copying is getting all that information from that website and you put it exactly word for word. Modeling is
00:01:57
Speaker
taking what somebody else has done and you incorporate little things here and there to kind of make you find your own style.
Enhancing Skills Through Modeling
00:02:10
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And that's the difference between copying and modeling. So that's what I did. I didn't copy, I modeled. I modeled my pottery off of 10 different, probably about 10 different potters. And what I did was I started out with
00:02:26
Speaker
How are they centering? How are they pooling? What are the things that they are doing to have the success while they're throwing, while they are glazing, while they're shaping, and when it's finally finished? What are they doing? I ask myself those questions. What are they doing to have their success to make it look like how they want it?
00:02:50
Speaker
So I started modeling and modeling and modeling. I started out with really my shape. Shapes are probably the easiest thing that you can model. There's so many different shapes out in the pottery world, even in the world in general. If you look out to a tree, each tree has a different shape. So I really was trying to look at different shapes from potters and doing it this way allowed me to kind of spark creativity in myself.
00:03:20
Speaker
and it helps with really trying to see what you would like in your own pottery and what you don't like.
Innovation Through Personal Touches
00:03:30
Speaker
So I would model, I would try to copy or model, model people's shapes because that was the easiest way for me to really practice what I was trying to achieve. And then once I kind of had a shape that I was comfortable with and I really liked,
00:03:50
Speaker
I started branching out a little bit. I would make some tweaks here and there. Maybe, and some people didn't make a foot ring. Well, I would make a foot ring on my mugs or my vases or my bowls. And doing something little like that will allow you to really start finding your own way on how you actually like to make pottery, how your pottery will look like. And so if you think about it in that way,
00:04:19
Speaker
If you just model, not copy, model what is going, what other potters are doing. It doesn't matter what you model, it could be anything. It could be from the way they're centering their clay. It could be the way they're pulling up the clay, or maybe you wanna model their glazes, or maybe they are designs. It sparks creativity and it helps you really
00:04:45
Speaker
go faster and help you really find your own style of pottery. Now, that's not to say that your pottery style won't change throughout the years, throughout the time you are making your pottery, because it will.
The Evolution of Pottery Styles
00:05:00
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But if you can, when you're first starting out, if you can model other people, other potters first, you're going to have a way easier time with finding your own style.
00:05:15
Speaker
Another thing that you should consider is to branch out a lot. Branch out. Do as many different things as you want. Try to find different ways of pulling up a wall because there are so many different ways. You got to find what works for you. If you could find what works for you, then you are golden. You are set.
00:05:41
Speaker
Now, thank you for this episode and get out there and start modeling and find your own way of making pottery.