Envisioned Piece pt, 6

From last time, I had to reconsider my numbers and sizes.

I list down all the different categories present in the infographic. Upon analyzing the infographic I realizes that focusing on the ethnics as I intended to earlier wouldn't work, since there was only one Arab and he wasn't a practicing Islam, however there were many Indian and Asian Muslims. Therefore focusing on the ethnics might confuses people about the number of Indians present in the data and the lack of Muslims/Arabs.

The data is focused on the level of satisfaction of the individuals and not on the number of Religion Groups practicing different spiritual practices. Therefore the numbers was used. I know that some data might be outnumbered by other religions and I will actually take that into consideration later when I'm doing the design to make sure the data is fair.

I did set them in their respective categories on the paper above and calculated their level of happiness which I now want to turn into percentages to be able to work with it more easily on the design.

I've reconsidered the sizes of the Vases, focusing the 5cm on the smallest part of the vase instead of just the opening. I've also decided to reduce the biggest size to 7cm just because I've realized it might not look so proportionally correct. The height will remain 12cm.

I've also decided that the rounded one will be for praying, since praying is a very common practice and the next design to it will be for Kundalini since it somehow reminds me of India. The 3rd shape from the right will be for meditation, since meditation is a common practice in the modern world even amongst the modern Atheists. The last one was a simple cup for NON BELIEVERS in Spirituality and NOT Atheists as I wrote in the image, this was a mistake. The reason was simply cuz I don't have any data for this category yet and it's present for the interactive part which will allow me to gain more information.

I made a template on which I will refer back to everytime I will be designing the potteries. I made a small scaled template as well to do my first attempt in making an accurate pottery. I don't have a picture of the test piece when it's clean I forgot to take a shot of it. But I have a pic of yet another test piece, which was a simple cube to do some further experimentation with painting.

You will also notice that I used a different air dry clay and I'm planning to make all the pieces with this brownish clay from now on.

Here's the test piece, I did a normal painting on the first pic. On the second one I use the texture of a muslim praying hat and it imprinted perfectly. I was actually testing on the other test piece too at the same time, I'll show the images later. But with the scaled vase I was having issues to obtain the texture, so I did a tryout with a lot of water on the third pic to see whether the amount of water was too much on the scaled vase.

Here's the muslim hat I bought at 2RM for my experimentations, I was lazy at the beginning and used the whole thing but had issues so I cut it in different sizes in the next pic. I kept one full just in case I'm using it on my final piece and I found that I need a large piece.

I did more tryouts with the cube. Trying to paint it white to see whether it is necessary to keep it white but I think the printing work best without the white as you an see. The details printed much better on the part without the white. I also experimented with the amount of water as well unto the muslim hat.

I used the 'wrong data' from the previous post, simply because it was more straight forward and my actual data was more tricky to work with. These numbers include the circumference size of the scaled experimental piece at 5 different sections of it from the height which I measured using a...body tape, which you will use to measure your arms, legs, waist and so on when you're buying clothes.

With all these calculations and damn numbers I finally obtained the data in sizes relating to the circumference of the scaled vase at different points.

DAMN.... that was long to explain....

Here's my scaled model. I found a random location and drew a straight line. From that straight line I took 4 circumferences, the smallest, the largest, the orifice and one at the bottom. Instead of starting from the straight line I used it as the middle point. I took my first largest data in the form of the circumference and I divided it by 2. Then I measured the right and left sides and marked it to form my first largest area for my largest data. After plotting all my data on the surface area of my vase, I use masking tape to hide the area I don't need to print the texture and experiment more....but accurately.

The first one was a failure, I did get a bit of texture but the paint was over concentrated at some spot and it's not the exact texture but more like.... bits...remnants of that texture.

I tried a plain white which worked almost perfectly.

I tried applying the texture over the white I did, it was a total disaster. I also tried another one which turned out okay, on the right side... but still not so accurate.

I did one last tryout without the white base since it seem to work best without a base, and it was yet another disaster. You can't even see the texture at all.

I didn't spread the paint well enough on the very first tryout on the vase but in this pic I spread it evenly. However I noticed a few things. I does work on a very smooth and flat surface like the cube, but with the vase it was hard to obtain such smooth surface I will explain why later.

The next thing was that, when I was trying to print the texture on the surface I was wasting way too much paint on the Praying hat. The material of the hat was absorbing the paint and since I was using acrylic once absorbed it was dried almost instantly. When I was adding more water it wasn't consistent enough and the paint was sort of faded.

It might have work if I was using oil paint or guash, but... I'm broke xD so I decided to go the cheap and most convenient way for me, by simply painting it.

I also noticed that the clay was so mouldable that it will hardly retain it's shape, especially the base. And when I added the top piece it will apply some pressure on the base and the base would lose its shape already, so it was hard to keep it smooth.

I came up with a solution, having a 10cm diameter sphere made out of aluminium foil will help me to get the shape more easily but most importantly to allow the base to dry and retain it's shape more before adding the top pieces.

After making the base, which I've gloriously forgotten to take a shot of, I was working on the top part. This time I decided to make the hole before gluing it. So I poke some holes through it making sure the circle was 5cm in diameter and using another tool I cut it out which...yet again I forgot to take a shot of....yay...

I was basically left with these 2 first pieces, the base and the other half of the sphere that will form the lower part of the vase with the hole already in. I scraped the edged where it will be glued with the same tool I poke the holes earlier with and applied some water on both side to sort of activates the clay again.

That's how it look after the merging.

Again... I forget to shot how I did the last part of the vase. I basically straighten a piece of clay in a large rectangle and using the same method I glued it on the top.

I allowing it to dry in between everytime I glued it. Then I tried smoothing the connected part to remove the connection line that was left.

Still, even though I was taking my precaution, everytime I was adding water to smoothen it, it will become mouldable again and lose its shape. So I'll have to occasionally re-shape it.

After it was fairly stable, I reshaped it into this and I also smoothen it with my hands only. Then I let it dry for a whole night.

Sorry for the ugly image in this one I forgot to do my setup. But this was a pic taken the following day, without anything done to it yet. I notice it got squashed a bit which suggest that its weight press over itself during the night when it was drying and there was a few more cracks here and there.

This was after a long polishing process I forgot to take the shots of. I started up, with water and a bit of dish washing soap in it. I use a 320 grade wet and dry sand paper. Then I polished it again with my hands and water. I allowed it to dry and then using the 320 again but dry this time followed by 420 grade which is finer I polished it dry followed by a 1000 grade dry again. No water applied at this step. The reason is that I noticed that the finer the grade the more the paper was affected with water for some reason. Maybe it was a very low quality sand paper, but anyway it got the job done.

I finished it up with a wet sponge and my wet hands. At this point it was really really smooth. Still had a few undulations here and there but the surface was smooth.

This is the second design I was working on. It already had 2 piece connected together, the very very thin, 5cm diameter base and a large rectangle glued on top I tried to pull it on the sides to make the sides reach a 10cm of diameter. Yes I kept checking using my template each time.

This was what I was left with after making the final top part which this time consisted of 2 thin rectangles. Basically this one was made out of 4 piece.

This was what I was left with after a very very long process. I actually tried smoothing it while it was still moldable. So again I waited after gluing it each time, then I smoothen the connection parts, then I waited again until it was stable, to shape it into this shape while also trying to smoothen the connected parts more. Then I used a sort of smoothing spatula I had at home to remove as many undulations I can after which I used the wet sponge at this point itself to smoothen it even more while everytime re shaping it cuz it was really really moldable at this point. After having this result I allowed it to dry over night. And I couldn't respect the proportion I wanted with this one its as twice as large as the previous one, but I thought it was just a tiny detail that won't affect my concept and my final installation at the end.

The shape also changed from the very first shape I was intending to achieve at the very beginning.

These are the Sketches I came up with for the totems for far. There's the rating and information on each animals on the previous posts, I've just designed it in this section. Some are incomplete indeed just to tryout certain aspects I wanna add to the ones I'm already very satisfied with.... just to save time.

There was no tutorial this week since there was the 1 week of holiday for Chinese New Year. So I don't have any reviews on my progress for this part yet.