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My work definitely incorporated the three aspects of the clay assignments. The leaf imprints turned out decent. I experimented for a while with different techniques for getting the imprint in, and questioned what I wanted it to look like. The overall product was a strip of clay layered with leaf prints, that I guess I was happy with. My animal was a wolf. I began with a pig, but as I sculpted, it began to look more and more like a wolf. I decided to roll with it. A challenge for that was that the clay was still wet, and the wolf couldn't stand. I countered this adversity by placing a rock in front of the wolf, as if it were putting its front legs up and howling at the moon. My last clay project was the most challenging. The bowl, which Mr. Ingenthron commented on as "looking like an ashtray," took me roughly two days. I began trying to make a large bowl on the pottery wheel, but pieces kept coming off with each mistake I made. I realized that the technique I was using on the wheel was not successful, so I sought advice. Learning a new technique from Mr. I, I was able to make a smooth, small bowl. The next step, decoration, was slightly easier. I imprinted a few pottery tools into designs on the bowl, including a checkerboard pattern at the bottom of the bowl that I think turned out very well.
As far as new clay project ideas go, I like the ones we are working with, but I'm certainly not opposed to thinking up new solutions for what to make out of plaster. I like the idea of chiseled plaster sculptures, like Sydney suggested. From blocks of plaster, we could make whatever we wanted. Right now, I think it would be cool to shape the plaster into a sphere with the rasp, then add cool designs. We could also make small plaster trinkets. I think that a sword or a thimble would be really cool and challenging.