Creative Ceramics

This fall I'm taking a ceramics graduate class.  I've always loved ceramics, but admittedly, it's not my medium of choice.  I'm not a 3-D thinker by nature, so I always find working in clay a little more challenging.  I understand all the basics- how to work with the clay, different techniques, all that good stuff- I just find that I'm not very creative when it comes to actually designing and making something.

This week was our second meeting and we were given our first assignment- a large-scale tile relief sculpture.  We're working in 6"x6" tiles, about 1/4" thick.  We must do at least 4 tiles, but can go up to as many as 20.  I've decided to do 6.

I spent that second night of class rolling out and cutting all my tiles, and by the time that was done, the class was over. I spent the following week designing my tiles, then in my most recent class, started drawing, cutting and building them up.  This is where I ended last week:

 I've had this underwater animal theme going for the last year or so, so doing an octopus was my first idea.  I just love that animal- so smart, and so weird looking!  I'm really excited about creating all the different, fun textures on the tiles next week.

But I started thinking ahead to future projects my professor mentioned and wanted to get a head-start on gathering information, so of course, I went on Pinterest.  Here are some neat ideas/techniques I hope to try this semester:

1. Alphabet Pasta

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Not exactly tile reliefs, but this technique could be used in any ceramic creation.  You just use some alphabet pasta, press the letters into your creation, and when it gets fired, the pasta burns away, leaving you with only the indentations.  How clever!  In the end, they look something like this, depending on how you glaze them:

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2. Imperfect Coils

I tried making a coil pot my first week of class.  It ended up just okay.  Thing is I got all neurotic and tried to make all my coils perfect, and of course, that's really hard to do- especially if you haven't done ceramics in, oh, I don't know, five years?  What I should have done was focus more on the process and just let the coils do what they wanted.  I found this student-made coil pot on Pinterest and I'm in love with the imperfections:

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3. Lace Texture

I thing textures are a huge part of why I love ceramics as an art form.  I love that you can create your own, or press things into the clay so that it takes on the texture of that object.  Recently, I cleaned out the prop room at school and found two really interesting pieces of lace.  I'd love to try them out like the gorgeous vessels below:

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I'm sure I'll be pinning way into the semester.  I'm hoping I can pop out a few extra projects on my own time to really make the most of my use of the studio/kilns at the university.

Any ceramic artists out there with suggestions for a sort-of newbie?