"Support". Early Stage.

Here's the most recent version of this plate, based off of a project where I was to establish a set of guidelines for getting marks on the plate, but could not do any of the marking myself. My guidelines were as follows:

-Give the plate to my folks for them to have during my bicycle race, which they would be spectating.
-Put the plate amongst the feet of the crowd, and forget about it until after the race.

The rules were pretty basic, but my mama took rein while I was racing and made sure to stomp it every time I crossed the finish line. I'm not bothered by this in the least, because really the project was about support. If she wanted to show her support by stomping my plate, so be it. You don't always have control over everything in life.

Here's a glimpse at the plate. It turned out rather pretty with natural areas of heavy and light lines, and there is an element of depth and clearing towards the center that I really like. What I'm trying to focus on now is getting the plate as clean as possible by honing my wiping skills, which have been my biggest weakness thus far. This is an especially good plate to practice my wiping skills on because the deep, coarse lines burnt into the plate tend to smear if too much pressure is added by the palm in the last stage of cleaning. In this way the plate is a sensitive indicator of how much pressure I should be applying, and though it is a bit maddening, it is proving helpful already.