It’s the kind of medium that can’t be hurried without disastrous results. So for a beginner, that’s a good thing. It forces you to slow down, observe, adjust, and to see the effects of your touch. You have to feel the weight of the clay, how much pressure it takes, and you have to let that translate into the work. In this way, slow practice gives you a relationship with the clay.
Slow practice helps you catch your errors. If you’re making slow deliberate movements, you’re more likely to notice when the wall of a vessel gets too thin, when it’s out of balance, or when there is a weakness in the construction. All of those tiny observations build into a practice that can’t be replicated any other way. Eventually you develop a feel for how the clay responds to touch and movement, and you know that it’s reliable.
Slow practice keeps you from feeling like you’re getting behind. If you expect yourself to produce “art” or even functional vessels at the beginning, you’ll be frustrated when it takes you an hour to throw a simple bowl. And that’s exactly what you should be throwing… simple bowls and cylinders. They represent every principle you need to understand in order to throw complex work. The sooner you commit to understanding those principles, the sooner you’ll gain the control you need in order to throw the more complex work without frustration.
Slow practice helps you practice in a meditative way. Throwing clay requires you to pay attention with your hands, eyes, and breath. In that way, it’s meditative, and you can’t help but learn when you’re throwing. It helps you develop a muscle memory that reduces your frustration and helps you trust your instincts.