How to Make Terracotta Sculptures

Video Transcript

"Hello I am Chitrotpola Murkherjee speaking on behalf of Expert Village and I am from Oxbis, India. Now, I am going to show you how a terracotta sculpture is made, a small piece, but I will show you. You take the dough and you bat it, bat it flat with anything, with a brush or a handle or whatever, and then you roll the clay and cut out the edges. You take a knife and cut the edges, cut the edges, so that you get a nice long six inch scale or eight inch scale depending on what. Then you bend it like this, so you've seen that we have made two bands together and we have shaped a cylindrical shape like this. Now, we are going to repeat this process and as we go further we keep repeating this process and putting the second glort, similar band that we have made; and we are going to put it on the first band by scratching the surface of the edge off the first one, little bit of water with a brush, and then we put the second band. Now we keep repeating this process of making these bands, and fitting it on top of one another, until it goes up and up and up; until we have come to a point where we feel that the basic foundation for what we are trying to make is complete. You will notice which is turning out to be hollow, it is a hollow cylindrical shape. For terracotta sculptures it has to be hollow. You know, it's almost like an abstract shape as you see it, but later on you can turn it into a completely abstract shape, keep it as an abstract sculpture, or we can place any kind of recognizable object. We can make it into a human being by putting it a nice head, or have just a suggestive shape which will give it some kind of identity. This is before fire, when in the fire is sand, rust, and brick, so if we keep it in the solo shape the heat is distributed much better, so that the heat doesn't affect. Well, this is very interesting, we are doing things, so I hope you have enjoyed this. Thank you."