Under coating

Undercoating is like putting paint on your totem. It adds colour and even more detail to your totem.

Waiting

Waiting for our paper clay totems to become bone dry so we could put undercoat on them was one of the longest parts of the assignment. I had to wait for about 1 week for my clay totem to dry because it was so big and full of moisture.

putting detail

Putting detail to our totems was a long and exhausting task. At first, I couldn't really figure out how I was going to put on all the detail. I decided that the easiest way to put detail on my totem was to basically stick it on.

What I did was role up some clay to form a worm, then shape it like a fish. I then added a tail and an eye. I did this image on two sides of my clay totem to make it look sort of like 3-D. The image that I was trying to make out was a fish swimming freely in the ocean instead of it being caught in fishing nets or the fish being stuck in a plastic bag.

The other two sides of my totem that I put detail on were about what I just said a couple of sentences ago. I would make long lines in the clay (which is the fishing net) and then put on little fish so that it looks like the fish are stuck and caught up in the net.

Putting it together

I put my totem together using the Scratch and Slurry technique to attach the clay slabs that I made earlier and made them nice and solid and strong. I then put rolls of clay at the bottom of each slab to support them from falling in. The next thing I did was to attach the top of the clay totem by using the Scratch and Slurry technique again.

CONSTRUCTING MY CLAY TOTEM

We learnt techniques such as the Pinch, Coiling, Slab and Mould techniques to put our clay totems together. I used the slab technique to put my totem piece together, so I had to measure out some cardboard and cut it out so I could make my slab pieces. I rolled out some clay and put it on my cut out piece of cardboard. I then flipped it over and cut off all excess clay to produce a shape like this:

I then cut out my base and top and put a little 2.3cm hole in the top and bottom of the clay piece to put onto our teams totem pole once it was finished.

IDEAS

We thought of lots of ideas such as coral, fish and sea creatures under the sea. We also thought of rubbish and pollution on our beaches and in the ocean. I thought of all the fish that get caught in nets and that's how I thought of my idea.