The first step in throwing on the wheel is the "electric Monkey" . That's basically hammering on the clay until forms a cone.
After you have a sort of cone shape, then you smooth it out and make it taller. You do this by cuping your hand in a triangle around the cone. Make sure you have a lot of water on your hands. This is not something I'm real good at right now.
After you have the cone, then you have to cross you thumbs so you don't use them and use your palms to press against the sides of the clay at an angle to flatten, not completely, the cone shape.Also not something I'm great at.
After you get it into a nice round shape, cup your hands around it at 3 and 9 o'clock to make it smoother and try to center it. You should be using a lot of water at this point so the clay flows through your hands instead of just rubbing and grinding against them.
This is just another image of what it looks like.
Next, take a needle tool and hold it inplace for a full wheel rotation against the clay. If the line made by the needle tool in the clay connects all the way around, your clay is centered.
When your cay is centered, take one hand and cup the clay, then take your other hand and open the clay up with two fingers. you do this by simply sticking your fingers in the top of the blob of clay.
After you've opened it, then you stretch the walls of the clayby pulling back on the walls.Then you need to compress the floor so it's flat.
just another picture of pulling back the walls
Next you take two fingers on the outside and one on the inside , and press together lihtly and slide up the clay. We call this riding the elevator.
This is how tall it can be made to be. Although ti can be made taller.
After all that, take your rib and hold it against the side of the pot to get all the water off.
The last step is to get your clay off the wheel. You do this by using a sort of metal dental floss contraption. Like cinnamin rolls.
