Working with Wet clay/Clay textures

 MEDIA: CLAY, TEXTURE UTENSILS

Modeling wet clay was a very new experience to me compared to modeling play dough clay which I'm sure all of us here has done when they were little kids.  Aside from the enjoyment I get from feeling the wet clay, I found it really slippery and hard to handle at times.  Building my oval-shaped slab took a while due to the process of shaping the slab in a certain way.  It is advised to start of with a ball of wet clay.  We were to work our way out little by little until we are able to form a face like structure.  To me, the quantity of clay served as a factor in making the oval like shaped face.  From my experience, having too much or too little can ruin the shape of the face in size.  Certain areas would be a little bulkier than other areas which us something I would try to avoid.  The best part about wet clay is that is is an additive a subtractive media.  I am able to remove clay from parts of the mask in order to balance out the shape.  Working with wet clay can be very fun but also can be a very messy type of media to work with as well.  With the wet clay, I am also able to work with different textures for practice.  I was a little spontaneous at this point because a just went crazy with the textures grabbing any tool I can find and making it work.  I had shells, rocks, blades, leaves and many other things to help compliment my mask.  I had blades running over my clay slabs, rocks being printed on the clay and leaves being placed for it's natural texture affect.  In terms of plan and design, knowing the possibilities I have let my imagination run loose on my mask.  Taking advantage of the additive and subtractive characteristics of the wet clay, I was able to cut out portions of the face to create the eyes and the eyebrows.  With doing that, I was able to distort the figure of the face by making it a different shape than usual.  I also took advantage of some household items and materials to help design and plan my mask.