Mole

As one of the shortest jars ever made, it’s only right to be made into a small creature that likes to burrow into small places. Since moles don’t have ears, this was a simple jar to sculpt. I just had to figure out how to make the hands, ultimately deciding on a chubby cartoonish look.

Unlike all the other animal jars, the mole is painted in a shade of grey that’s very close to black. If I painted my standard black dots as eyes, you wouldn’t even see them. So instead of painting in the dot indentations I made during the sculpting phase, I meticulously scratched off the black paint to get white smiling eyes.

The dark paint is unforgiving with the porcelain clay. If any paint drips onto exposed clay that I want to leave bare (which would look white after firing), it would be so hard to erase with a wet sponge. The colour would seep into the rough surface of the raw clay and at best look smudged gray. That’s exactly what happened to me and also why you see the little painted black hearts on the inside of the jar.

There are also large hairline cracks in the clear glaze on the inside of the jar. Everything still feels smooth but it’s strange seeing these cracks when the outer surface doesn’t have this. This will still be a mystery to me. The takeaway from this jar is to think about the colour scheme while sculpting. In this case, I could’ve carved in the smiling eyes instead of dots. Also should have left the eyes untouched while painting for contrast since it’ll be less work than having to scratch off the black paint afterwards.