Sea Otter

Way back when I first began making animal jars, I wanted to make sea otters. However, I wasn’t sure how to showcase the simple lines of the sea otter with clay and paint. That’s why I started out creating river otter jars, with their characteristic snout and belly line colours. Now that I’m a lot more comfortable with different animal features, I attempted to make the sea otter.

At first, I made the nose and ears too prominent which made it look like a koala (which I might try later!). After shrinking down the nose and attaching tiny spheres for the ears, I finally got the look I wanted. In the next step, the two tones of underglaze will distinguish the face from the rest of the body. I used a pencil to draw out a neat circle on bisqueware before painting. It took many attempts of drawing and erasing before I got a symmetrical face area marked out.

Similar to the river otters, I sculpted on arms that extend over the two cheeks and a curved pointed tail. To ensure that the paws won’t snap off from glaze fusing again, I made a more dramatic curve away from the body such that there are no close contact points.

I really took my time clear glazing this otter, it took three attempts of dip glazing and washing everything off before I got something I liked. The first attempt failed because the glaze was too thick which would cause the glossy finish to turn satin, similar to the frog. In my next attempt, there was very little glaze left in the bucket so I tried pouring glaze over it and got really uneven coverage. My last attempt finally succeeded and I made sure to carve away all the excess glaze pooling in the crevices of the ears, nose and arms.

When the finished piece came out of the glaze firing, I was so happy with it. There was no bubbling or cloudiness in the crevices and there was a nice shiny finish. Now that I have a sea otter design that I’m happy with, I’ll reuse it on other forms!