Transcript
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. Art has no rules. What is up, Shaping Nation? This is Nick Torres here, and if you don't know me, it's my mission to help pottery service your unique voice with your pottery. so A lot of advice I've been getting lately from interviewing a bunch of different potters is they're saying that a lot of people think that there's only one right way to do something and like if teach them somebody teaches something they think that they have to that everybody has to do that exact same thing over and over over again because that's what they know. Right. Everybody has to do that because that's what they know.
Speaker: But that's not true in art and in pretty much everything. There's no one right way to do something. Some some ways may work better for you. Some ways may work better for somebody else. I'll give an example. So when I was first learning how to throw on the wheel in my high school class, my ceramics teacher taught us a certain way how to center and how to throw on the wheel, how to pull up the walls. But I wasn't necessarily having that good of success with that way. And i it took me till a year, literally almost a whole year later, probably a little more, to find out something that kind of clicked for me by doing something completely different compared to what my I was taught to by my my ceramic teacher.
Speaker: You know, my ceramics teacher taught us to you use use your left hand to brace and then use a sponge at the heel of your palm and hold that sponge there against the clay and then you'll be able to center it a lot easier. But that just wasn't working for me. And so I had to I had to switch from that to doing two hands, two hand centering. And when I did that, that's when things started clicking. It was a lot easier. And then he also talked to use a sponge and kind of hold it like the ah chef's kiss to pull up the walls. But that wasn't working for me either.
Speaker: So I switched a completely different way and then I started seeing success with my drawing and that would have happened if I would have kept doing the same thing over and over and over again because that's what I was taught or that's what I was taught and that was supposed to be the rule of pottery. but art doesn't have those rules. And you may hear people say it sometimes where you have to do this certain technique, but that's not true. Art has no rules. Don't be afraid to break them either. You may learn something to help you, but don't sit there if it's not working for you, right? Testing's out, testing out something that something new. Find something that works for you and stick with it. Because if you can find that one thing that works for you,
Speaker: Then you can go a lot further. It also works as just as well for the technique or the way you're you're actually decorating your pot. Right. Some people like glazes. They really like glazes. They really like how certain glazes react to each other. And they just like that. I myself don't necessarily like that that much. I just prefer using underglazes and I prefer just adding a clear glaze because that is just much easier for me. And I just find it that I like that way much better. But other people like glazes. right But no one way works for everyone. Some people like glazes, some people like graffitos, some people like carving, some people like hand building, some people like wheel throwing. No one way works for everyone. Find what works for you, stick with that, and keep improving it as well. right Once you have found that one thing that works for you,
Speaker: Keep going with it. Remember, art has no rules. Keep growing with it. Keep doing things to push your pottery, push your art to the next level. Grow by experimenting, doing things that other people wouldn't do. Simply by doing that, your art will grow, your voice will grow, your pottery will grow. Everything grows simply by not listening to the rules of art. Art. I use quotations on that. The rules of art. because there are no rules of art. Do what works for you, keep doing that, and find what works for you. I hope you guys enjoy this episode and I'll see you guys in the next one. Thanks for listening to this episode of Shaping Your Pottery with Nick Torres.
Speaker: If you want to start discovering your own unique voice, you must first start with the right questions. That's why I put together a free 15 question booklet for you to start discovering your own unique pottery voice. All you have to do is go to shapingyourpottery .com forward slash questions to get this free booklet.
