Smoothing, Signing, and Calling It Finished
Okay. Foot ring's carved, bottom's not poked through, and you've got a bowl sitting on the wheel that's basically done. This is the lesson where you stop.
I want to say that plainly because this is the part where beginners get bored and either fuss the piece to death or walk away too early. Both ruin it. So let's just go through it.
Smoothing the trimmed surfaces
Wherever you trimmed, you've got tool marks. Some people like them left visible, honestly, and that's a fine choice once you know it's a choice. But for a first bowl I'd smooth them out so you can see the shape clean.
Take a damp sponge, not dripping, and go over the outside walls and the foot ring with light pressure. You're not adding water to reshape anything, you're just knocking down the ridges the trimming tool left. If the sponge is dragging clay instead of smoothing it, it's too wet. Wring it out more.
A rib works better than a sponge on the foot ring itself, if you've got one. Flat side, light pass, rotate the wheel slow by hand instead of turning the motor on. You don't need power tools spinning a nearly-finished pot. Slow and by hand is plenty of control.
Cleaning the bottom
Flip it over — carefully, it's leather-hard, not concrete, it'll dent if you're rough with it — and check the inside of the foot ring one more time. Sometimes there's a little crumb of clay sitting in there from trimming that you missed. Pick it out with your fingernail or the tip of a needle tool. Little things like that show up under glaze later and you'll wish you'd caught them now.
Signing it
If you want to sign your work, now's the time, while it's leather-hard and still takes a mark but won't smear. A needle tool works fine. Initials, a small mark, whatever. I do a simple A on the bottom, near the foot ring, small enough that it doesn't look like I'm trying too hard.
You don't have to sign it. Some people don't want to. That's yours to decide, not mine.
Opinion time, since we're here
I think finishing the piece is the actual lesson, more than the throwing was. Beginners quit right around here, at this boring smoothing-and-checking stage, because the exciting part already happened back at the wheel. But this is the difference between a hobby and a story you tell about the one time you tried pottery. Finish the bowl. Sign it or don't, but finish it.
The $89 kit thing
I want to bring this up here because it matters for what's next, which is drying and firing.
I looked up a "complete beginner pottery kit" online a while back, out of curiosity, and it was $89. I got a little annoyed, not gonna lie, because I could look at the photo and tell you it was maybe thirty bucks of actual stuff. A rib, a needle tool, a sponge, some clay, all marked up because it's got a bow on it and says "beginner" like that's a permission slip to overcharge you.
You already own everything you need for this whole class. A rib, a needle tool, a sponge, a wire, some wood or metal ribs if the studio's got them out. That's it. If anybody tries to sell you a kit before your next class, do the math on what's actually in the box first. I tell people this stuff because nobody told me, and I had to get annoyed at a webpage to figure it out myself.
A word on drying from here
Don't wrap these back up in plastic now that they're finished. From leather-hard, they need to go to bone dry before firing, which means air, not plastic, and it takes longer than people expect at this elevation. Our air's dry up here, so it moves faster than it would somewhere humid, but don't rush it by putting it near a heater or in direct sun. Fast, uneven drying cracks pots, especially around foot rings where the wall thickness changes. Slow and even, out on a shelf, is the move.
Before next time
Get all your bowls to this stage — smoothed, checked, signed if you're signing — and set them out to dry the rest of the way before next class. We'll talk about what happens after bone-dry, which is the kiln, and that part I hand off to the studio's kiln person, because that's genuinely not my expertise and I'm not going to pretend it is.