This is considered the hardest part of sculpting for some ….. hollowing out a sculpture after all the time and effort that you have spent getting the clay to take the form that you want, so that the whole thing doesn’t simply blow up in the kiln. If this were to happen, not only would it be terribly sad to see so much work go to waste….but it may also damage other work in the kiln – and that simply would not do!

Here are a few photos I have put together to show you the tricky process of hollowing out…..

First of all, bear in mind that the finished article looks like this:

Emergence II by Liz Shewan

So, now you will the see the process that I had to go through in hollowing out ……

First of all I had to cut various parts of her off and then hollow her out to a thickness of no less than 1cm and no bigger than approx 2.5cms. So I started off with the neck and the top half of the chest:

I sliced off the top with a wire and started to hollow out the clay from the chest and neck

I then had to cut off the wings as they were so delicate. They had wire supports in them so it was quite a tricky job to get these out without breaking the form of the wings...and then I hollowed them out too

So, you can get an idea of the process here - one wing was still attached to the back.

Now, to her mermaid tail ...... I cut if off with wire and dug out the clay

and some more now in the main body .....

Now it's time to put the back piece back on. To make the seal firm I cut into the seam with a sharp knife, criss-crossing to allow for maximum absorption of the clay slip to glue it together....

..... I then apply the clay slip to the seam ......

.... and I stitch them together by digging in quite deep in to the seams with a sharp knife .....

.... here you can see I have gone all the way round .....

... and then I smooth it out with a wooden tool, back to it's original form.

I then lift it up and gouge out the bottom of the sculpture, all the while making sure that it does not get too thin, or too thick. The clay does need to have dried for a certain amount of time to go through this process so that it is solid enough to support the sculpture once you've hollowed it out. If you do it too soon, the whole thing will collapse and there could well be some tears!

Now it's time to put the front back on, so that I can then put the wings back on.... you can see that I have had to put in a support on her back so that the arch shape stays in place as I am about to put some more weight on it .....

.... on goes her front .... being careful to keep the original form ....

... and now for the first wing .... you can see I am supporting this one too ....

.... and finally the last wing goes on .... voila! She is ready to dry some more, before she goes into the kiln.

to look like this!

I hope you enjoyed seeing through this process. You can see that quite a lot of work goes into producing something like this – and some of it pretty hair raising! It’s all worth it though.

Next up will be a quick picture of the kiln opening ….. an exciting moment indeed!