Whistle Project Essay

I started the project with a design the we drew on paper. I created my whistles with clay. I used wedged clay to create the main shape of my animal. I then took a ribbon tool to hollow out the base of the whistle so that it would be able to whistle. For my octopus I put a knife through the bottom part of the front and a pencil through the bottom. This allowed the wind to move through the whistle and come out of the pencil hole to create a sound. For my hippo I made the whistle on the side and bottom. The serrated rib tool allowed me to scratch and attach additive pieces so they would not come off in the kiln. The needle tool made it easy to draw in textures on my animals, even though neither of my animals have texture I still added texture on the mouth, eyes, and nose. For my whistle project I used a variety of different tools that helped the outcome of my whistles. …show more content…
The process of making my whistles started out with just a sketch of my ideas. My first step for both whistles was to make the body of the animals. I wedged the clay so that all of the air would come out and then started to form the shapes of both my animals. I created the bodies of the animals and hollowed them out leaving the thickness a good size (about the size of my pinky). After hollowing my whistles I patched the hole of the whistles and added the other pieces. My next step was to put holes in my whistle so that it would actually whistle. I put a knife directly into both whistles and then a pencil through it so that it would intersect the knife. I then rounded the pencil hole, this is so air can catch it and make a noise. After finishing this my whistle was fired so that it would harden. I painted my whistles to make them look more realistic and add texture. They were fired again so that the paint would set. I put two coats of blaze to set the paint. One last time my whistle was fired to set the blaze and my whistles were