Hello hivers, an happy Tuesday to you all!
Yesterday, after the dinner, my hubby 
I have to premise here in my region (Tuscany, in Italy) there is a long tradition to work with the local natural clay and there are different kinds of it with different colours from red to brown and less or more impurities, so it's very interesting to sculpt things with different kind of natural clay. The one we used yesterday night was from Montelupo and it's in brown color with just few impurities, so it very simple to sculp small details too.
To work with this natural clay needs different steps from the first one when you sculpt the piece (the clay have to be wet to be sculpt) to the last ones after the pieceis baked (at very very high temperatures) to create terracotta and, if you want to obtain ceramic you have to "cook" it another time at a different temperature.
Yes, it's a long process. 😊
Yesteray it was the first lesson of the course and so we just sculpt something simple. The students sculpted some vases and I sculpted a simple figure because, at the hand, I want to paint it in my own illustrative style.
This is the one I made (don't worry, it's just a work in progress) and a couple of tools I used to work the clay:
The piece is empty inside, this is because, when I'll bake it, it will have no problems.
Just to know, this is just the first step, because now I have to wait it will be dry enough, so I'll make it more smooth using the sandpaper and just when I'll have the result I wanted so I'll put in the clay oven that you can see in the following pic:
Days ago we bought a lot of natural clay and you can see a "pane" (the italian word for "bread") of natural clay:
In the following pic you can see the table where we worked the clay inside our lab room:
Stay tuned to see the next step (when the piece will be dry enough to adjust it).
See ya soon and stay safe,
Silvia
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