Now that our clay is wedged we're ready to move on to our forming process. So we have our wedge Kona clay here, go ahead and line it up in the center of your wheel head and give it a little roll just around that bottom out, kind of create this mushroom shaped bottom. Now this is important because when we add here, this clay to our wheel head or our bat, this is going to naturally push all of the air out. You don't want to you don't want a pocket of air caught between your clay and your wheel head because that's going to make forming the clay very difficult because that pocket is going to keep pushing back and forth on you and knocking you out of center. Now you may have youtubed or seen other Potter's walk up to the wheel, grab their clay and take it and slam it down on the wheel head.

Now I don't recommend this because the first big hurdle you're going to have To get over his learning how to center the clay, and if you take that clay and throw it down, and if you're off just even a little bit, it's going to make centering that much more difficult on you. So I'm going to show you a smarter approach to it. And this is going to work well through all our forming processes, especially when we move on to working with larger pieces of clay. Because we want to be smart about our approach we want to be body friendly, we don't want to try to force the clay or manhandle it. First want to take that clay, line it up at the center of our wheel hit start the wheel spinning just a slow rotation, rotation or to a second and then in a clapping, chopping motion, secure that clay down to the wheel head.

Something like that. Sometimes I'll even run my finger along the connecting jointer to make sure we're really attached. And there we go. Now I like this approach. Because before we've ever added a drop of water, you can see we are almost centered already. Now what is center?

What does that mean? Well, if you take a look at our bat or right here or your wheel here, you can see how it slides smoothly all the way around my finger. That means we're centered. And so as we begin to shape and form the walls, they're going to shape and form evenly. If you are out of center, you're gonna have a thick and thin side which is going to cause this total world effect and continue to lead knock you out of center. So if we take this our place up there, you can see I'm completely out of center there tapping one side and not the other.

So we need to work this into our nice center position. So we'll go ahead and knock us off center there. Now again, I want to really stressed proper body position. Clay throwing is not a macho thing, you want to use proper technique and finesse. So first, we're gonna lay build up a nice layer of moisture on the surface of the clay. Building up that layer moisture that layer slips the clay size evenly through your hands.

Next, to take that left elbow and bury it inside. Your leg inside your hip or inside your gut. Couldn't nice solid body contact, bend your wrist back, like so. So you can see right now I'm catching the clay I'm working with the momentum of the wheel. If I was trying to center the clay on this side, I'd be lying relying on shoulder and lower back strength. But right here I'm just using my natural body mass to catch the clay.

And this is where all my control is coming from. Simply by rolling my hips into the clay. I can easily take control of this piece of clay and you'd be surprised it's only two or three pounds here, but if my elbows are out here or floating up in the air, it's gonna be real easy for this clay to push me around. But again, just locking that elbow inside your body creating that nice solid body contact. It's going to give you solid control over this clay. If you have trouble figuring out the proper amount of pressure to use on this clay, you can always take your hands from side to side, very both elbows, lay them right in front of you.

And again, it's still that same idea of catching up But just fill it, slide between your fingers until you feel it smooth out a little bit. And that'll help to just illustrate the proper amount of pressure to use on that click. It's starting off, you don't want to use just one hand, we're going to be using both hands and this is going to again still be in our centering world, our control position and by controlling again, I'm referring to this elbow being locked into our body so we have nice solid control over this clay. Once you have that elbow buried, wrist bent back. Again, what this is going to do is create that straight line straight into our center of gravity. Give me a thumbs up with that left hand, grab a hold of that thumb laid over and raise that right elbow.

And it should look something similar to this right smaller piece of clay you may want to float up on your thumb a little bit, but it is important to keep those hands in or locked. Now that right hand is going to slightly compressed down but more than that it's more of a ceiling really, because you lean into it with that left hip. That clay is natural. Gonna compress up against that right hand, you're gonna get that clay squeeze hold your position until you feel it smooth out and then float away. So I'm rolling in, I feel it's smooth out, and my hands are just gonna float away. Oh butterfly hands.

Okay, and this is important because if you let go too fast, what that's going to do, okay, I mean here, I'm squeezing and squeezing and smoothing out. Now let go real quick. It's very common and knock yourself out a senator. So we're just going to lean in, roll that left hip squeeze, fill itself smooth out and float away. Again, we're working with the momentum of the wheel, just using our natural body mass.