Category Art

HOW ARE CLAY ARTICLES SHAPED?

Clay can be shaped when it is wet by squeezing it between the fingers, “throwing” it on a potter’s wheel, or pushing it into a mould. Before using any of these methods, the potter must make sure that there are no air bubbles in the clay. If there are, the air will expand when the clay is baked, and the article may explode, breaking other items in the kiln as well. However ceramic articles are produced, they are made a little larger than the finished product needs to be, as they shrink slightly when baked.

1. Start off with clay of the proper consistency: soft enough to throw easily, yet not so soft that it will quickly collapse. Clay that’s too hard or dry is very difficult to throw. Be sure to wedge the clay carefully up to 100 times, taking care not to fold it in a way that might trap air bubbles within. Mold into as perfect a cone shape as possible, and smooth out all cracks.

2. Slam cone onto the center of the wheel head or bat. Slowly spin the wheel to see if clay is off center; if so, gently slide cone toward the center as much as possible while the wheel is turned off.

3. Thoroughly wet the clay and start wheel turning to begin centering process. Cup hands evenly around clay and force cone upward and downward a few times to align the clay particles. Then firmly press inward with one hand, and downward with the other, making sure the entire exterior surface of the clay hump is in contact with a portion of the hands. Keep hands firmly positioned in one spot, and with wheel spinning rapidly, steadily maintain that position until the clay offers no resistance, periodically wetting it as necessary. Whenever you remove your hands from the clay, be sure to do so SLOWLY, so as not to knock the piece off center.

4. Once the clay is centered, cup hands around it and allow thumbs to glide into center while wheel is turning. Press slightly to make dimple, or impression, in the middle. With both thumbs and one of forefingers, steadily press downward in center to make a hole in the clay that’s roughly 1/2 to 1/4 in. from the bottom. Periodically stop the wheel and check the depth by poking through the floor of the pot with a needle tool until the desired thickness is reached.

5. Now use forefingers or thumbs (whatever’s more comfortable) to open floor of pot outward, being sure to slide fingers across the clay STEADILY, at the same level as the desired thickness of the floor of the pot. Continue to open the clay outward until the inside diameter of the pot is roughly 10% wider than the desired inside diameter of the finished piece, to plan for shrinkage.

6. Begin to pull clay upward with fingers or knuckles of both hands, one on the outside, the other inside. First undercut the bottom edge of the pot with outside fingertip to form a clay ledge. (Always make sure to re-set the rim of the pot after each movement, to keep it on center.) With fingers of inside hand slightly higher than those on the outside and outside fingers (or knuckle) positioned underneath the clay ledge, gently squeeze the clay between the fingers at an even pressure, and steadily pull upward at the same rate the wheel is revolving. (At this stage, the wheel should revolve at a medium to slow speed.)

7. Repeat the process until the clay walls have reached an even thickness and desired height. If you accidentally knock the clay off center or end up with walls that are uneven, try this: apply a straight-edge wooden rib to the outside of the pot, and hold your left forefinger at a 90 degree angle, pointed downward, on the inside of the pot. Slowly spin the wheel and force the wall of clay between the inside forefinger and outside straight edge back into a uniform thickness, slowly and steadily gliding upward until entire wall is uniform.

8. Gently shape the pot with fingers or ribs, re-set the rim, and release from the bat with a wire or string cutter.

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WHAT ARE CERAMICS?

Ceramics are objects made of materials that are permanently hardened by being heated. Usually, the word is used to mean articles made of various forms of clay. Sticky clay is dug from the Earth and needs to have impurities, such as stones, removed before it can be used. The clay may be naturally red, yellow, grey or almost white, but can be coloured before shaping or covered with a coloured glaze.

Ceramics are essential for our day to day life. It is useful from clay products to porcelain. Generally, a ceramic is a non-metallic, solid inorganic compound. Earlier ceramics were used only for pottery. Now, with the changing times, ceramics are more and more used only for specific purposes. Use of ceramics has been from ancient times. Based on these uses there are three basic types of ceramics:

Stoneware

Stoneware is an umbrella term for ceramics fired at a higher temperature. It is known for being impermeable and hard so it’s not easily scratched. It is typically glazed. Modern brands such as Far & Away have really brought this type of ceramic back into the mix.

Clay products

In this category, many of the common ceramics like bricks and tiles are used. They are basically prepared from clay. For their shape and state, they are processed and pressed in a wet plastic state after which they are dried and then fried. Clay products that have higher density show better mechanical properties but they also have the low insulating capacity. And thus can easily catch fire. Higher density is achieved through an increase in nitrifications and also through increasing fire temperature and finer original particle size.

Refractories

Ceramic can resist higher temperatures and that is why they are also used as refractories. Refractor ceramics can withstand very high temperature and are thus used as insulating materials. They can also resist high stress. Refractors should also resist abrasive particles, hot gasses, and molten metals. For best refractors ceramics made of pure oxide is used. But these are very expensive and thus compounds made out of ceramics are used more often.

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What are the examples of Prehistoric art?

  • Cueva de Manos: The cave of hands, in Patagonia, Argentina, gets its name from the “stenciled” handprints that dot the cave. Of course, there are other depictions of hunting scenes and animals, but the hands (most of them are left hands) were spray-painted and hence, the specialty. These date back up to 13,000 years.
  • Altamira Cave: This cave in northern Spain was discovered in the 19th Century. It had depictions of bison, horses and handprints, coloured ochre and outlined in black. They were so well-preserved that scientists thought it was fake until 1902, when it was deemed genuine.
  • Lion Man: This is a prehistoric sculpture discovered in Hohlenstein-Stad!, a cave in Germany, in 1939. Nicknamed Lowenmensch, or lion man, it is the oldest-known zoomorphic (animal-shaped) sculpture in the world. It is between 35,000 and 40,000 years old.
  • Nazca Lines: The Nazca Lines in Peru are great examples of geoglyphs. These large creations are made by incisions in soil. They are of various animals such as monkeys, dogs, spiders, and fish and since they are so big, they are best seen from the air. There are over 70 such images with the total length of the lines being over 1,300 km. They occupy over 50 sq.km of land. These are more recent, and date between 500 BC and 500 AD.

Wow Facts

Scientists have found drawings by homo sapiens that date back as far as 73,000 years – some of the earliest in history! Among the oldest in sub-Saharan African art, the Blombos Cave has abstract geometric signs and beads made from shells. These were discovered in 2002 and date back to 70,000 BC. The discovery suggests that human beings used and understood symbols back then.
The Bhimbetka and Daraki-Chattan caves in Madhya Pradesh are the oldest evidence of prehistoric art and human existence in India. While the caves had been used as shelter in excess of 1,00,000 years, the earliest paintings there are 30,000 years old.

 

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What is prehistoric art?

Prehistoric art constitutes all forms of art and communication in pre-literature eras and the pre-historic period, roughly from 40000 to 5000 BC. In layman terms, much before there was papers or pens, leave alone mobile phones, computers or the Internet! This meant that people had to communicate with each other in person.

Prehistoric art is among the earliest forms of sculpting and painting. Whether this art took shape to express one’s creativity is unknown but what is clear is that humans wanted to leave their legacy behind. Either that, or they were just really good at Pictionary!

So, early human chose what they could find and began to draw. Sometimes it would be a cave. If that didn’t get the message across, they would make sculptures (the most popular being the Lion Man, said to be about 40,000 years old). Geoglyphs (a large design made on the ground, mostly using rocks or other materials) and megaliths (a large stone sculpted into a monument) probably helped as well.

These forms of art were a way of recording history and culture until humans began to develop some kind of written language to keep records better. Therefore, the age at which prehistoric art transitions into ancient art is blurry and varies it different parts of the world. You know earlier, not everyone caught on that fast!

 

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What is Cubism?

The early 20th Century witnessed a breakthrough in the art movement. Two iconic painters – Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque – no longer wanted to follow the traditional form of art. They didn’t believe that painters had to copy nature or everyday moments. Instead, they wanted to portray the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Hence, their paintings were flat and the forms were reduced to geometric shapes to give the illusion of a three-dimensional view, allowing the viewer to see different parts of the picture simultaneously, breaking away completely from traditional techniques. French painter Paul Cezanne and popular French art critic Louis Vauxcelleslooked at Georges Braque’s painting “Houses at L’Estaque” in 1908 and called it cubes. And, cubism was born.

In the beginning of this period, the subjects of the paintings were almost indiscernible. They were a collection of angles and planes that blended into the background and were almost in monochrome. The painters usually used musical instruments glasses, bottles, still-life and human face and forms as subjects.

The idea of Cubism was to abandon the idea and traditional notions of shape and form and present the world in an entirely new way. It used influences outside of western art, such as African art, and even science as its base to form different perspectives on a flat canvas.

The liberating concepts had far-reaching influences and were not contained to just art. It spilled over to architecture and sculpture as well.

Examples

 Man with a Guitar: This 1912 painting by Georges Braque is one of the most popular examples of analytical Cubism, a later evolution of the form. Here, the artist uses nails and ropes on a flat surface to depict a man playing a guitar.

The Weeping Woman: This iconic painting by Pablo Picasso tries to paint a universal picture of suffering. Here, Picasso directly targets the effects of the Spanish Civil War and some even say the picture had a personal story behind it. Picasso’s mother once called him saying all the smoke from the fighting (during the war) was making her eyes water.

Ma Jolie: Another of Picasso’s masterpieces, the representation of forms in the painting in subtle. The form of woman is visible in the centre, presumably his lover Marcelle Humbert. There’s also a treble clef drawn next to the name of the painting. Ma Jolie (My Pretty Girl) was a line in a popular song at a music hall in Paris that the artist visited frequently.

Wow facts

Even though many artists were moving towards abstractionism even as early as the 18th Century, Cubism was the first abstract art movement. It intentionally reduced all forms into geometric shapes and gave a flat but simultaneous view of different sides of the same object. It was a scientific art form.
Cubism wasn’t popular in the beginning. In fact, in the early 20th Century, not depicting nature in its purest form was considered scandalous and heretical. But over many years, the path-breaking form began to gain the importance and respect it deserved.

 

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What is Expressionism?

In the early 20th Century, there was a period of loss in spirituality and high anxiety, surrounding humans’ relationship with the world. At this time, artists began to shun objectiveness and turned within to unleash their emotions. The result was an expressive canvas with distorted shapes and exaggerated, vibrant colours that displayed emotions, rather than a picture. There, Expressionism was born.

The artists at the forefront of this movement were Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch and James Ensor. Van Gogh, particularly, was the symbol of this movement since his paintings were mostly autobiographical and chronicled his emotions at different times of his life. Unlike Impressionism, Expressionist art did not aim to depict the world as it is but impose the artist’s sensibilities and feelings about the world. The paintings were harsh, bold and intense, and the artists encouraged distorted shapes in order to convey or exaggerate emotions.

The decline of Expressionism was also because of its intensely personal nature. The paintings were vague and unapproachable, and by the mid 1920s, the movement slowly came to an end.

Examples

  • The Starry Night: Painted in 1889 by Vincent Van Gogh, this painting depicts the scene that Van Gogh saw from his window at his asylum room at saint-Remy-de-Provence in France. An icon of Expressionist art, its swirling skies and the sinister cypress tree overlooking this scene are all reproductions of Van Gogh’s emotions on canvas.
  • The Scream: Edvard Munch’s most famous painting is everything that Expressionism is about. Throughout his career, Munch’s art described emotions such as anger, guilt, anxiety and fear while talking about humans’ relationship with the world around them. “The Scream” is no different, and often, just a look at this painting can create an emotional jolt due to its vibrant colours and exaggerated, distorted shapes.
  • Sunflowers: This iconic painting by Van Gogh is one part of two series of paintings. The first series had the sunflowers wilted and on the ground, while the second had a bunch of sunflowers placed in vases. The sunflower was special to Van Gogh and signified ‘gratitude’ and he hung his first two paintings on the wall in his friend Paul Gaugin’s house. Gaugin called the paintings ‘completely Vincent.’

Wow facts

  • Expressionists often had swirls and swaying components in their art, exaggerated and painted with bold brushstrokes to depict their own internal turmoil.
  • On his painting “Scream”, Norwegian artists Edvard Munch said he was walking with friends when “suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood… Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature”.

 

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