Lorrie Whittington

Illustrator - Designer - Maker

Ceramics Course – Week 6 & 7

So, last week (week 6) we created pots using a ‘former’ and a process where we rolled up balls of clay, lined the former and then pressed them down to compact together so that the outside of the pot would be textured/patterned. I made a couple of pots. One very basic and small (which apparently did survive), and the other slightly bigger and more adventurous (which didn’t). However, it transpires I did not press the clay down enough, and so was not joined properly, and as you can see in the picture, the clay pulled apart in the drying process.

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Ceramics Course – Week 5

Going to keep this one short and image led. Our first slab pots have been fired and are now ready for glazing. We learned about clear glazes and oxides. We learned what’s in them, their many and varied forms and uses, and that they are toxic, so no drinking!!!

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Ceramics Course – Weeks 3 & 4

Sadly, I accidentally deleted all the photos I took in week 3  (including everything I had taken in the last two years!), so have nothing to show you. However, basically, in that week we learned about using ‘slip‘ to decorate the slab pots we had made. Slip is a essentially a mixture of water and clay, and generally coloured.  You can dip your pot in slip, paint slip on your pot, do trailing or painting with it. There are many and varied ways slip can be applied to a pot. So, my photos would just have been of my slab pot freshly painted with dip. Alas, gone…so moving on.

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Ceramics Course – Week 2

So, this week we finished off our first pots ready to be fired. In my case a bit of tidying up of the edges and some decoration of the rim and the fold. There wasn’t really a lot left I could do to it, without it ending up looking a bit fussy.

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Ceramics Course – Week 1

So, last night I attended my first ceramics class at Northbrook College in Worthing. Which is a big deal for me, as it’s been decades since I worked in clay, not since being a student in fact. Despite the slightly hair raising journey (as it’s been years since I drove out to Worthing), I got there in one piece and early. I will skip the intro bit about having my piccy taken for my badge etc (apparently I looked sombre!), and move straight to the class.

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Creative + Passionate + Inspired

Lorrie Whittington is an illustrator, designer-maker, free spirit, chocolate eating geek, living in the heart of the Sussex countryside on the south coast of Britain. She draws, paints, reads a lot, makes things with clay, likes scf-fi and hangs out with her daughter.