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My piece represents me and my past few years of my life. I have always struggled with dealing with pressure and stress from life. Until this year I have been able to deal with it much better than the last years and this piece reflects what it felt like almost every day. The figure in the middle of the shark and hand represents me. The hand represents the pressure and stress from life pushing down on me with all its force. The shark represents the jaws of defeat and certain doom. This piece shows that I must never give up and I must keep strong under all this stress or else it won’t end well for me. There’s always hope and you have to stay strong because there is nothing worse then giving up and falling under pressure.

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Basic design of what the side view of how two of my pieces are going to look on the wall relief. Still need to add the figure in the middle between the hand and shark and slip and score everything in.

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I needed something that could connect the shark with the hand and then I thought up the great idea of creating a simple figure. The figure was far from simple, the arms and legs keep on falling off and every time its limbs were still attached something didn't look right. At this point when I took the photo I thought the upper body looked pretty good, but the body still had some problems. Maybe it was the way I was making the figure because I would roll the clay into long rolls and use those as the arms an legs.

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After I had a lot of my shark done I look over at my neighbor across and saw that they were making a hand. That helped ignite my image for the wall relief and I needed to create a hand for it. So I started with a ramp of clay and then traced and cut out the shape of my hand.

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At this point in time I really had no direction for my wall relief, so I thought I could start with an animal. The first animal that came to mind was a shark because my Dad loves sharks and I used to draw sharks for his birthday. I started by getting a mound of clay and just started forming a can like shape. Then I cut out part of the top of the can shape for the mouth and then started to form up the head with the clay I cut out.

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Flattened out a piece of clay for my background and put the outline of my supports. I made my background a few inches longer than 12 inches because I wanted some more room to work. Also I didn't want it to look cramped when everything was on the background.

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My hand was looking extremely bulky and the only way it represented my hand was the shape. So I needed to use the large wire loop and start shaving down around my fingers. Once I had a lot of clay removed from around the fingers I used my own fingers to make them more rounded and realistic. For the thumb since I have a hitchhiker's thumb I had to add the curve it makes. After all that my hand was coming together and looking like the real thing.

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My shark was lacking some key features like the teeth and the eyes. Before I add the teeth, I have to add gums for those teeth to attach to. For the gums I just cut out little strips of clay and placed them on the opening of the mouth. Then for the teeth I had a flat piece of clay that I rolled out and then I cut out little triangles and just stuck them on there. The problem was I didn't use slip so they were very weak. For the eyes they were just little balls that I rolled and I sprayed water on the area where I wanted to put them and stuck them on.

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My hand still wasn't looking real at all. I grabbed the large wire tool and started to shave down the palm and back of my hand into a rounded shape. After that my hand was looking a lot more realistic. The next thing I need to do on my hand was the webbing and fingernails. I grabbed the small ribbon tools for the webbing and started using it to create that valley shape in your hand. The finger nails were a bit challenging at first because I drew them instead of forming them. I got a fettling knife and started to push it into the tip of the finger in the shape of my nails. I made sure that I was measuring the exact dimensions of my nails to make it look like my hand. The main issue I had with the nails was that the middle of the nail wasn't as rounded as I wanted it to.

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After working on my hand a lot I though it was about time I start working on my shark again. At this point I learned that if you don't slip and score something it will fall off. Right as I pulled my shark out of the cabinet I saw all its teeth fall off. The gums also came off partly so I just thought to myself might as well redo the gums and teeth. While I was taking off the gums I cleaned up the shark a little and made sure to hydrate it because its been sitting in the cabinet for a while.

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Finished the finger nails by adding a little bit of clay in the middle of the nail to create more of a rounded shape. Then with the webbing I took a little more clay out to deepen that valley. Then pushed the fingers more together to make the webbing more realistic in how wide it is.

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My hand didn't look like it was pushing down and it felt like it was missing something. I grabbed a brand new piece of clay and started to form it into a large cylinder. Then I knew at this point my hand was missing a wrist and that could really tell the story of it pushing down. So I slip and score it on and angled to how I thought it looked best.

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My first time seeing all my pieces together and almost completed. Now I just have to add the shark on then start thinking of the background design for my piece that gives it even more meaning.

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My vision for my piece was to have this figure that I just created to hold up my hand. So I had to start shaping my figures arms into a way that make its look like they are holding up the hand. It had to look like the hand is very heavy because its supposed to be forcibly pushing down on the figure.

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Flattened another piece of clay and started to cut out the supports. The supports had to be really long in order to support my background. That meant it took me multiple slabs of clay until I had the perfect length for the supports.

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I found the perfect spot where I want my shark to go and then I got to work slip and scoring it onto place. I made sure to put a lot of pressure when placing it so it wouldn’t fall off since it will be hanging up when it’s done.

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I still had half of my background that wasn't designed it was just smoothed out. It a few days for me to come up with an Idea then I thought of shattered glass. I felt like it fit good with my idea for the piece. So I grabbed one of the small metal wooden detail tools and used the side with the curved end and started to sculpt out the design.

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I an nearing the end of my project and my final steps are to slip and score all the pieces together. The only problem I had with that was that the human figure has to be floating. So to fix that I made a little clay pillar to hold the figure and when the figure was slip and scored to the hand I could easily remove the pillar.

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I slip and score the figures legs to the shark first then I slip and scored the figures back and hands to the hand. Everything was all together and I made sure that the hand and figure were securely connected. Once I knew it was all structurally sound I removed the little clay pillars from under the human figure. Since the figure stayed floating I did a good job with my slip and scoring. I was really happy at this point because now all my project needs is cleaning up.

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After learning you have to slip and score something to make it stick, I made sure I was using a lot of slip. I didn't want my sharks teeth falling out when I am almost done with the project. So I added slip to the inside of the mouth and slip to the new strip of gums that I cut out and firmly placed them on. Once the gums were nice and secure I cut out little triangles from a flat piece of clay and added a lot of slip to each of the teeth and to the gums. Then put pressure on them to make sure I don't make the same mistake of letting the teeth fall off.

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The area around my shark was looking pretty plain so I needed to add a background that would make it pop. So I started to take slip and spatter it on my background to give a water effect and to make it look as in the shark is jumping out of the water. I had to make sure once I had the slip on there I wouldn't touch it because if I did it would mess up the water effect.

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The problem I had with my shark was that it just looked like a floating cut off shark head because their was a giant hole in the back of it. So I flattened out a piece of clay with the slab roller then laid it on my shark. I cut it down so it would look better and I think it turned out really good.

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Got all my supports cut out and they fit perfectly on my background. It took multiple slabs just to get the two long pieces. Then one slab to get the three little supports cut out.

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The shark was still missing something then I remembered the fins that it had. I took the scraps from the slab that I used to make the shark longer and cut out the fins. I then slip and scored the fins onto the shark and I made sure I had a reference so those fins were in the right spot on the shark.

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Put on four of my supports and it was relatively easy. I made sure that I was using plenty of slip so my supports would stay on the background really well. The only issue I had was that I made two of the little supports too long so I had cut them down a little.

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My hand was looking a little flat and that not how my real hand looked. So I got some fresh clay and laid it down on top of my hand. I shaved off excess until I got it looking exactly like my own hand. The arm that I had on the hand was way too long and if it was on my wall relief it would have stuck out a lot. So I decided to cut a lot of it off and it still looks like the hand is pushing down, but fits better on my wall relief.

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Finished putting all the supports on my background and the only problem I had was that the last long support was a lot longer than it needed to be. I made sure to shave it down a little to the perfect length. After that however there was some unevenness in the supports that I had to shave down to make the wall relief not tilt when it was on the supports.

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Since I didn't create my figure as good as I should of the arms and legs fell off again and again. So this time I learned from my mistakes and started to slip and score the arms and legs on there. After that the legs and arms never fell off and were pretty secure for the rest of the time building the project.

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After the supports were on there was a lot of boogers and slip still left on the background. So I needed to clean it up I little and I grabbed a wet little sponge and started to gently run it up and down the support. I made sure that when I was cleaning my piece with the sponge, I sealed up the area where my supports attached to the wall by spreading the slip out more and cleaning up the excess.

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My fingers were looking very sausage like and I wondered what I needed to add. Then Mr Stout told me to add wrinkles and it should make it more realistic. I made sure that I measure the lengths at where the wrinkles are on my own hand to make my clay hand look just like my own. To make the wrinkles I got one of the metal detail tools and made sure I wasn't drawing the wrinkles, but pushing in with the tool and forming them. I then finally went over the wrinkles with a wet paint brush to make the wrinkles more rounded and not as deep.

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I was approaching the very end of creating my hand and now all I needed to do was hollow it out. I took one of the cutting wires and just went through my whole hand.

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Hollowed out the back half of the hand with a small ribbon tool. I made sure that my hand was at the most half an inch thick because I didn't want it to blow up in the fire. When I wasn't sure if the thickness of a part of my hand was good I took a needle tool and started making vent holes.

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Hollowing out the front of the hand now. Just repeating the same process that I used to hollow the back half of the hand. The only challenge with the front part of the hand was the fingers. I had to get a needle to and make a hole down the figure so it would be the right thickness and I did the same for the thumb.

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I had to make little pillars to put into the hand so it wouldn't cave in. I then slip and score the pillars in the hand and also the hand itself. I had to make sure that when I put the hand together I applied a lot of pressure because I wanted to make sure that hand would fall apart. After it was all together I got a wet sponge and started to clean un the hand and remove some clay boogers from it.