For the past week I have been working on the hair part of my portrait bust. While working on it, I have learned new techniques for coil rolling that makes it a lot easier to roll thin coils. What I figured out to do is first make a very thin slab and then cut long pieces of clay out. Now, you have a long square coil and you can pinch the edges of it then roll it out like a regular coil. This makes it easier to roll thin coils because you can start from a smaller piece of clay rather than clay straight from the pug mill. It also is less likely for the coil to dry out because you don’t have to roll it as long. In order to create volume on the ends of each braid in her hair, I made small pockets of clay to place the ringlets of hair on top of. Another technique that I learned is to paint water on the surface of an area of the clay with a paintbrush. This makes the surface almost like slip so you can easily carve into it. I used this to do the stripes on her blouse.