Finished Non-Objective Pinch Pot Spheres

I'm so sorry that I haven't been posting lately!  This year just doesn't seem to be my family's year...Over the last month, my husband and I have been dealing with a diagnosis of testicular cancer.  Currently, he will be starting a 9 week chemo regimen to get rid of this horrible disease.  I have already lost sick time from my maternity leave but still need to be there to take care of him, so unfortunately, my posts will once again become far and few, if not stop, for the next couple of months.  

In the mean time, here are some of the finished pinch pot spheres from my Studio class.  This was actually the 2nd project in their ceramic unit, however next year, I would probably do this one first, the coil project second, and the slab project last.  Currently, students are glazing their coil pots and I just need to finish photographing their glazed slump/hump projects to share.

These spheres were glazed using Amaco's Opalescent glazes.  These glazes aren't necessarily meant for red glazes only, but they tend to have a cool effect if applied correctly to red bisqueware.  I couldn't find my Artist's Choice glazes (which are meant for red clay) to use so I went with these alternative glazes, which turned out pretty cool anyways.

In the future, I feel as if this project would definitely be better served as the first project in the ceramics unit not only because it's the easier hand-building skill, but because it would also be a good way to show students how glaze application affects the final outcome of the piece.  Next time, I would probably have students section off their design somehow and glaze each section differently: one layer, two layers, three layers, and a very sparse, splotchy layer.