How to Form a Clay Cup

Video Transcript

"Now we've got our center piece of clay. We're ready to pull our little cup. So you want to push down with you left finger, using your right finger as a support. You do want the thickness on the bottom of this to be around a half an inch. Because you're going to want to have some clay there for when you connect the stem to the cup. Use your needle tool, check your thickness. I've got a little bit over a quarter of an inch, between a quarter and a half. That's great, will work just fine. So now I'm going to take my left thumb, right thumb and press it against the wheel head and move it towards the clay to give myself an undercut. That gives me something that I can pinch and pull up. And that's what I'll do now. I'm pinching with my left hand and pulling up and compressing with my right hand with the sponge from the top down. Give it another little undercut with my finger and pull up again. I'm just going to do a simple kind of wine glass shaped cup this time. And then I'm going to take my rib, and I'm going to push in and compress and pull against the rib with my left hand. Now just one more time to get the shape that I really want. Now you want to undercut with your rib by pressing it against the back and pushing it towards your piece. Take your sponge, clean the lip, take the water out of the bottom and you're ready to make the pedestal."