Now that you've completed some of your cups and you've you've finally reached the point of having a nice finished product, and I'm already looking at this and I'm looking at a, this can be a great spot for a little handle the jump off of the next step again is to finish the forming process, which would be the trimming process. Now, just like every vessel, think of every vessel as an individual, and every individual deserves its own foot, the foot that I put on this particular piece may not necessarily be the exact same foot that I put on this piece. And I'm looking at this we have this nice hourglass shape and we kind of have this waistline here. So I'm thinking I'm already kind of trying to picture a foot on this. Maybe just a nice rounded foot to kind of continue to echo this shape here as it's stepping down.
Before I flip it upside down. I'm going to take a second fill the thickness again, and then barely, very gently flipped upside down. We're at that nice leather hard state. It's not so soft that I'm going to distort the rim by flipping it upside down, but it's not so dry that I'm going to chatter or kick up a lot of desk through the trimming process. Like pressure down my finger extending my right index finger, burying my elbow so everything is supported. Work it back into center.
All right, that looks pretty good. Once again, we're gonna secure it down with two lugs at the same time. So as you can with these smaller vessels, most likely you're not going to need this larger trimming tool. If you are, it would be just to kind of fine tune it knock off some of the bigger chunks right off the bat right off the bat, but for the most part, I'd recommend sticking with the smaller trimming tool As always, I'm just going to trim the outside of the piece first. Treating that foot, nice undercut there, clean up the excess clay here. Can you can see how ready that that's starting to create a nice little bass there for the piece and it's going to lift it up off the table, suspend this object into space.
It's not going to feel bottom heavy as grounded, especially representing this hourglass shape that we have. This is kind of an elegant shape. We've been a little bit of a sexy shape, it's very soft, very gentle and wants to be held. Now we're gonna move to the inside and remove the excess clay creating that foot which is going to eliminate those wobbles and also remove that excess clay to lighten the physical weight of our piece Okay, lastly, enough those trimming marks because again it does tree Marcia there. Unless they're conceptually justifiable, they're just gonna be confusing and feel rough to the touch, they're not gonna fit with the form, you're gonna lose some late unity throughout the vessel. move our legs, sign our piece.
And voila. You can see already this has much more of a finish quality to it than it did before. where something like this feels very grounded and bottom heavy. Now it's refined is defined as a nice foot in gonna elevate this piece up into the air. And I'm already seen about a nice two finger handle right here, which we're going to talk about in just a few moments. But again, every piece is different.
So let's do a couple different feet. This one is a it's a looser forms of mortgage. Some thinking a little more organic, but maybe some that flares out a little bit that we can then come in and distort and alter a little bit. So we're going to come in and center this one up. Now with these looser forms or even with your early cylinders or early cups, your rim may be a little bit off or they may be a little bit distorted. So with that being said, that's going to make the centering process a little more tricky.
The key to this is to just pick one spot to center to and stick with that spot. Don't try to center down here and then move your finger up here and try to center up here. Just pick one area and stick with that. Generally right around in here, the base of the P. So I'm just gonna focus right in here and center this general area and ignore the rest of the vessel. Okay, that looks pretty good. Now it may take you have a little bit of back and forth to get these centered up, but it will get easier with practice.
I'm turning off my legs. Again, I'm not pushing it into the vessel, just simply laying them along the side of the vessel and compressing that down into the bat or the wheel head. And that'll be enough to secured into place. Once again, trimming the outside first removing this excess clay. Like I said, I'm picturing a little more of an organic split here. So I want to go with something that flares out a little bit that I can come back in and continue these organic curves in.
Yeah, I think that's the competitor. Can this is gonna be nice with a nice soft, maybe a nice wide handle on it. It's a little bit of a bigger piece. A nice big coffee cup. Come in and remove the excess clay from the inside creating our foot. And if it is helpful, helpful to you, you can always draw that line at that point of no return.
Okay, so now we're looking pretty good. I'm going to come back in, soften up those lines removing some of that excess clay. Like I mentioned, this is a more organic shapes, I might want to play up this organic foot a little bit. And what I'm picturing is some nice flow, some nice little divots in it and there's a couple ways I can go about doing this. I could simply my foot is soft enough now that could take my damp sponge or my damp finger and slowly work it back and forth. create this movement in Excel Another possible technique is to take a dowel rod or the end of your trimming tool even this give a little tap.
Just a couple doesn't need to be all the way around. Now this is going to get away from that nice that that tight foot which wouldn't necessarily make sense with this form because this isn't a tight form. This is a looser form. It has the movement to it. So aesthetically, conceptually, it makes sense that the foot would have a little bit of movement to it. Okay, let's sign and move our legs.
Let's see what we have. Okay, screen clean all that up in a minute. We can see just those couple of those little dents kind of goes along with the echo the flow of this roundness, this softness here, it has a nice playful quality quality to it as well. So almost like the pieces crawling along the table. be fun to play with. Alright, so we have one last vessel here to trim and then we'll move on to bowls and we'll come back and Visit these cups in just a few minutes and put some handles on them.
Okay, so we're taking a look at this when we have some dance and this one too. So we could also come back and visit the idea that dance, we could flare it out. This is a nice functional piece right here, this looks like a just a very functional coffee cup to me. So I want to make sure I have enough wide enough but that it's going to take the abuse of everyday use of being knocked around and being you know, moved from here to there. So I don't want anything too small. I want something very functional.
Maybe some that flares out again to echo the shapes or possibly even some a little bit straighter. That could echo this area right here. But again, I'm thinking I don't want to take it too small, where this one is maybe a little more a little more delicate piece as a smaller foot. Compared to this one. This one's a little bit wider and more a little more masculine. So I'm thinking just turn a picture all in my head how all these elements are going to flow together.
What type of handle to put on them with that hourglass one Might be a nice just to finger handle. This one might need something a little bit bigger, a little more masculine, maybe something with an uplift to it we fit, get three or four fingers in there sinnard up, secure with your legs of clay and always trimming the outside first to go with a little bit, not completely straight but a little bit of a straighter foot to echo the top lip in Mecca this piece, I think something like that could be nice and it's also gonna help to lift this up because it is such a wide piece has a real sense of volume to it a little bit of a taller foot on it can help to lighten it up a little bit visually lighten it up. That's one thing with these three dimensional objects we're dealing both with the visual layout of the piece but also with the actual weight of the piece and that there's something to keep in mind.
It's not enough for the piece to only be light but it must visually appear like or vice versa. Let's clean this up just a little bit more, we'll move to the inside. Yeah, that that I like that line right there. Because then that that neck of this piece has that slight dip, so we're kind of echoing that shape of the top and putting in a unity within this piece. You can draw my line, Sandy, this is gonna be my foot right here. I'm going to remove all the excess clay within that area, which again, is physically going to lighten this piece up.
It's going to eliminate those wobbles. It's gonna allow us to glaze the base of this piece. So we have a nice watertight Tesla. Those trimming marks soften up that line right there. So just to review, make sure you always watch out for those sharp or squared edges on your room and your foot because again, this is gonna want to chip on you. This is very tight, very sharp right there.
So I can simply compress that back and similar to how we compressed our rims, thicken it up a little bit, so that this book can take the abuse of everyday use. And along those same lines, you can see my foot right here is about a quarter inch thick. That's a pretty good standard thickness I know keeps mentioning this quarter inch, but that's a good standard inch thickness. If that came to sharp or let's say our foot came up to a downward point like that, again, you're going to run into that same issue of this foot wanting to chip and crack on you. And if it's too thick, then you're introducing additional weight that isn't completely necessary. Which is so nice.
About a quarter inch thickness is a pretty good standard rule again. Once you finish trimming, sign and remove angle, we'll set these up to this side. Let them sit up for a minute and we'll come back and put some handles on