I have been trying to work out a tutorial for small scale boro vessels, using still photos and it just won't come together. Working with a student in my studio, going through all the steps, I finally realized what some of the problems are.
When teaching a live student, I can say "blow a little harder", or "watch how the glass is moving when you get the heat base just right." These are things that just don't translate into still photos well, or at all!
Another factor is that in my previous tutorials, I was designing them for an audience who already had an applicable skill set. So I was showing how to make a specific object, knowing that my audience already knew the basics of moving the glass around.
While talking to my student this week about my problems with this project, I realized that soft glass beadmakers, even very good ones, don't have the set of basic skills for working with boro tubing. The timing is different, the way the glass moves in response to heat and gravity is different and even the tools are different. Lampworkers who do beads and small sculptures very seldom use puntys. All of which means that I first have to teach (as I did with my studio student) some basic things about blowing bubbles, using puntys, applying dots and wraps to thicken walls, graded heat base etc before we can even get to how to complete a vessel.
So, instead of saying "here is a tutorial on how to do boro tubing vessels," I need to say "here are a set of exercises to help develop the skills you will need in order to do boro vessels."
In retrospect, that is how I taught Zora (daughter and studio wench) to do vessels. Step by step, learning each skill until I could say, "now put it all together and make a blown vessel."
I think the light bulb over my head just came on!
-Don-
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