Noobs and Mug Making! (new stuff!)

Hi everyone,

So I've been lurking like crazy for a couple of days now (instead of writing this awful New Media paper) and I'm very, very interested in making mugs! The problem is, I haven't found one good tutorial on this website (augh!). I was hoping, since it seems this forum is full of people posting their beautiful mugs, that I should ask!

Some stuff you should know:
I have the great luck to go to a school where we have a student union run art studio. This means that we have studios that are separate from the art majors, including a class sized ceramics studio. This means I have access to clays, glazes, tools, and kilns! And people who know how to use kilns! All of this for a cool 200$ a semester (which isn't so bad when you consider everything you're getting and how long a semester is)

Also, I want to make one-of-a-kind pieces, I'm not really interested in making molds. I reeallly like Vantiki's stuff. And I'm kind of nervous about using wheels. Is there a way to construct drinking vessels without it? Like rolling out panels, cutting them, and curling them together.

So yeah, I've done a little research, but I would really love a tutorial, one with pictures would be great. And advice about what kind of clay to use (real confused here), glazes, what drying/firing stages are. How to layer details on a base mug to get some intense stuff going on.
So yeah, educate away.
Thanks,
Weitz

[ Edited by: Weitz 2010-08-02 23:55 ]

[ Edited by: Weitz 2011-02-05 11:19 ]

Weitz, welcome to TC. There is some good info in here, lot's of it in Babalu's thread, let me dig around and see what I can find for you. Your best bet is to take a beginning ceramics course there at the college. It will teach you the basic types of hand building like pinch pot, coiled form, soft slab, hard edge slab, etc. It will also get you going in the basics of joining pieces with slip, texture, glazes. Yes, it will take some time but it will save you endless hours in failed experimentation (I know :) )

Damn Kids nowdaze want everything for free!

Finger it out on your own and GO!!!

Arrrrrrrrr.!!!!!!

But mr. scary pirate man, it is so expensive.
::whimper::

No, honestly, I could just go and pay the studio fee and putz around in there. That's what I'll end up doin, since my schedule doesn't really allow for me to take a full fledged class. I just don't want to waste the attendants time the entire session :/

ON the plus side, I did find this:
http://www.slideshare.net/nefftexans/slab-mug

Oh My!

On 2010-06-23 22:42, MadDogMike wrote:
Weitz, welcome to TC. There is some good info in here, lot's of it in Babalu's thread, let me dig around and see what I can find for you. Your best bet is to take a beginning ceramics course there at the college. It will teach you the basic types of hand building like pinch pot, coiled form, soft slab, hard edge slab, etc. It will also get you going in the basics of joining pieces with slip, texture, glazes. Yes, it will take some time but it will save you endless hours in failed experimentation (I know :) )

Thanks for the advice. I'm really enjoying this thread. Been scanning through it up to page 19 now. Lots of good ideas.
I'm hoping to make a set of animal-ish mugs. I'm a biologist, and my hypothetical-mini-tiki-lounge-that-will-reside-in-my-future-grad-school-apartment will be called The Shipwrecked Naturalist (I like Darwin/Wallace era science, I do, and it'll be fun to combine these two distinct aesthetics). I doodled out an Archeopteryx bowl sketch earlier today, maybe I will post it later.

I've been wanting to make my own mugs ever since I became interested in Tiki culture and I know I CAN and WILL someday soon. I just have to pull my finger out and get stuck into it. Anyway, when I first found this site I came across this thread. Hope this helps.

http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=18329&forum=18&hilite=hmc

P.S. Can someone tell me how I change the link into a heading title. Does that make sense? Never done it before and i'm curious.

P.P.S. Ben is right though.:)

[ Edited by: swizzle 2010-06-24 07:26 ]

Swizzle, that is a great old thread, it's the one that first pulled me into making my own mugs and inspired me to join TC.

The link code you are looking for is (bracket)url=http://www.whatever.com]Title[/url] Just replace the (bracket) with a [ Hope that makes sense, I can't type in the first bracket or it will display as a link :)
This page will give you more info.

This How to comic used to be on Squid's website it tells you everything you need to know.

Weitz, here's the plan for a basic mug;

The clay you use will depend on the kiln and glazes you have available, check and see what they are using in your ceramics department. There are hundreds of clay mixes that all have different characteristics,

Use a rolling pin to roll the clay out into an even thickness slab. A piece of 3 inch ABS or PVC pipe about 8 inches long makes a good form. Wrap a sheet of newspaper around it, then wrap the clay around the newspaper. Score and slip the seam and work the edges together well. Set the cylinder on a slab of clay and cut around it to make a bottom. Score and slip the bottom and attach it well to the clay cylinder.

Let dry for a while (maybe an hour) until slightly firm, slide the pipe out of the mug and remove the paper. Now you have a blank mug form that you can add clay to or carve into. When you are finished sculpting, let it dry slowly over several days by wrapping it loosely in a plasic bag.

When COMPLETELY dry (no longer cool to the touch) it can be bisque fired, glaze brushed, dipped, or sprayed on, and then glaze fired.

This is, of course, an oversimplification - but it will give you a starting point. It is one of those things best learned from watching and doing, not from reading; make a friend in the ceramic department who can help you out :)

Yay! Thanks, for the advice. I'm going to run over to the ceramics place today and see if I can fineagle my way into a session there.

This should become the begininer's attempt thread! We can all post stuff.

I posted a video on the "pinch pot" method for making a mug. I made a monkey with this, but it could be used for a tiki if you made it taller and skinnier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNxIqfYnZwo

Good Luck, and remember to find inspiration in vintage and try not to copy living, working artists! You'll end up with a better, more original result if you look at Oceanic Art History books or images for inspiration!

Aloha!

Just got back from vacation and stumbled on this thread. I fully agree with what others have said - just get out there and start pushing some clay around! You can make mugs without a wheel very quickly (I don't have a wheel in my studio). That's not to say wheels are bad - you can do amazing things with them. I'd recommend checking out some hand-building books from the library or bookstore to learn the fundamentals of clay assembly.

Tiki Tony - mahalo for the youtube shout-out! Love the video (and the monkeys)!

I've got a few time-lapse videos of mug production here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/VanTikiStudio#p/u

and will soon be adding a tile-pressing video. Best of luck on the mugs - be sure to a) share photos, and b) be ready for kiln disasters :)

Henrik "VanTiki"

Thanks everyone!
I'm going off to Japan this upcoming Monday for three weeks so I haven't gone ahead and gotten that membership yet, BUT I will as soon as I get back (and recover, heh)..
BUT if I have been increasingly distracted by a little blob of sculpey III I had lying around. I've been prototyping (because it is tiny) a mug. It's currently the size as a shotglass and drying out on my windowsill before I fire it tomorrow. It's too bad that Sculpey III is probably not food safe and (even if it was) I have no glaze, but it'll make a fun desk buddy if it survives.

Alright, so like I said before, I had some sculepy III lying around. Here's basically what I did (for any one else that's learning and for picture-posty sake)!

Wrapped some clay around a collecting vial (I'm an entomologist, I am). It's skinny shotglass sized.

Cut some stuff out of rolled clay, added.

More stuff!

Oven baked, painted several layers, and glossed!

Woo.

travel sized!

Alright, so yay, my first tiki thing. It was fun to do this as a sculpting and carving excercise. But frustrating as well because I'm used to working with ceramics clay and this polyurethane stuff is SO hard. That and you need alcohol to smooth it. And it was so tiny that I really couldn't smooth it.
Ah well! I'm off to Japan on Monday and then I'll come back at the end of July to work in the actual studio.
He needs a name :/

So you smoothed it with.... RUM ?

Don't forget to use metal tools w/Sculpey products! Wooden tools will make it behave like chewing gum.

Yes. Delicious 1970s British Royal Navy Rum :/

Or Isopropyl alcohol : D
haha, as I didn't have any tools with me, I ended up using one of those multi-tool nail clippers.

Also, this took so very long because I took a night out at Forbidden Island with some friends. A drinking partner abandoned me with Fugu for Two which is very delicious but not meant for one person. At the end of the night I was saying "I LIKE THIS FISH. IT IS PLEASANT TO TOUCH". I understand now why they take your ID when you get that bowl. I want a fish bowl.

No kidding- those bowls'll get ya every time. Scorpion bowls 10 bucks off on Sundays at Forbidden Island.

I like the spikey sides!

[ Edited by: amybean 2010-06-30 13:35 ]

Very cool prototype Weitz, it's gonna make an awesome mug!. Did you end up leaving the vial inside?

Nope! I kept the vial in it til' baking time and took it out before the baking. If it was a big mug, would I have had to take it out earlier, or does it not matter?

Yes, you definitely have to take the form out soon. Depending on the thickness of the clay, the ambient temp and the relative humidity it will only take 30 minutes to 2 hours for the clay to dry enough to hold it's shape. Ceramic clay shrinks as it dries, it will crack if left on the form too long.

Alright! Here's my first mug, which is currently drying (it's for the bird of paradise trade. Looks more like a totem mug, lol)

And my second, which is going to be an Appa (from Avatar, the Last Airbender) mug. He looks like this in the animated series: http://www.calinstitute.com/images/appa.jpg

Still needs about two hours of cleaning up/carving before drying out time.

yay!

Hi Everybody!

So I'm back from Mo'orea/Australia/applying to graduate schools and back in the ceramics studio!
I've gotten tired of having such thick mugs and I figure I'll never learn how to throw dainty little things and then carve the heck out of it, so I've decided to try my hand at mold making. I'll be making the mold for this fellow probably on Friday, but here's the WIP of the master in progress. He's a pretty stout cube and even taking account of shrinkage, he'll still be pretty large.

Front. His name is Cheeky Monkey. He also sort of reminds me of the monkey heads in Temple of Doom.

Look! A tail! woo!

So yeah, few more hours of work on this guy, and then mold making on Friday. Fun times.

Ah, and I forgot some other stuff from the summer. I'm no good at glazing, so far. Oh well, more to learn.
My Archeopteryx tiki bowl :D

Yup, very rough beginners stuff, but there you go.

Good job! Be proud of yourself.

[ Edited by: Zinctiki 2013-10-04 14:14 ]

Love it ZincTiki. You should start up your own thread so we can see your progress :)