Opening Wider for a Bowl Shape
Okay. So you've got your walls up. Two, maybe three pulls, and if you did the last lesson right your hands were wet the whole time and the wall's got some height on it and isn't tearing every time you look at it wrong.
Now we've got to talk about why a bowl doesn't look like a cylinder with a bad attitude.
A cylinder goes up. A bowl goes out. That's it, that's the difference, and most of the trouble people have here is they keep pulling straight up out of habit because that's what the last four lessons trained their hands to do. Your hands got good at "up." Now you're asking them to do "up and out" at the same time, and there's a stretch of a couple weeks where that feels like learning to pat your head and rub your stomach on a spinning table.
What's actually happening
When you open a wider bowl shape, you're not making a new move. You're taking the same pull you already know and changing the angle of your outside hand so the clay leans out instead of standing straight.
Inside hand stays roughly where it's been living, knuckle or fingers pressed against the inner wall, guiding it up. Outside hand is the one doing the new work. Instead of matching the inside hand straight across, you let your outside hand fall back a little, elbow still into your hip like we talked about way back, and you let the wall lean into your outside fingers as it comes up.
You're not forcing it outward. You're just not stopping it from doing what clay wants to do once it's got some height and some centrifugal pull working on it, which is flare.
Steps for doing this at home
- Start your pull like normal, from the base, both hands wet, steady pressure.
- About a third of the way up, start easing your outside hand back a few degrees. Not a big move. A few degrees.
- Keep your inside hand supporting from behind so the wall doesn't just flop open. The inside hand is the one keeping the shape honest. The outside hand is just letting it happen.
- Go slow here. Slower than your cylinder pulls. A bowl wall is more exposed to its own weight once it starts opening, and rushing it is how you get a wall that folds over on itself like wet cardboard.
- Stop pulling before you think you should. You can always do another pull. You can't undo a wall that's gone too thin at the rim and started to wave.
If the rim starts doing a little wave, that's usually speed. Either your wheel's too fast or your hands moved too fast relative to the wheel. Slow the wheel down. It's not a character flaw, it's just physics.
The opinion part
I'll say the same thing here I've said since day one: ugly first bowls are correct. Your first wide-open shape is probably going to look a little lopsided, maybe more shallow dish than bowl, maybe leaning like it's had a rough morning. That's fine. That's expected. I'd rather you make five weird-shaped bowls tonight than one careful one you're precious about. Your hands learn the "out" motion by doing it wrong a bunch of times, not by you thinking really hard about the correct angle before you touch the clay.
A word about handles, sort of
This isn't really about handles, but it connects to something I think about a lot, which is how much a small imperfection can end up being the whole point of a piece instead of a flaw in it.
My first mug that made it through the kiln has a handle that pulls slightly to one side. Not dramatically. Just enough that you notice it if you're paying attention. I use that mug every single morning, on purpose, instead of one of the straighter ones I made later. A straight handle would've taught me less. I look at that pull to one side and I remember exactly what my hand was doing wrong that day, which is more than I can say about the mugs that turned out "correct" and taught me nothing because nothing went sideways.
Same thing's going to happen with your bowls. The first lopsided one is going to teach you more than the fifth symmetrical one. Keep at least one of the weird early ones instead of tossing it. You'll want to look back at it later.
One real caution
As the wall opens wider, it gets more exposed and more fragile, especially near the rim. If you're going to check thickness with your fingers, do it gently and do it while the wheel's moving slow, not stopped, not fast. Pinching a thin rim between two fingers while the wheel's at full speed is a good way to fold the whole thing sideways in about half a second. I've done it. It's not dangerous, just annoying, and you'll swear a little.
Before next time
Try opening at least three or four bowl shapes this week, and let at least one of them turn out crooked on purpose just to see what your outside hand does when you exaggerate the flare. Keep the weirdest one.