A few years ago, I couldn't access any good, smooth, creamy, mud, so I started to buy pottery clay for the sole purpose of turning it into mud. The feel and consistency has always felt amazing but the colour has never looked like natural mud, in my opinion.

Smooth clay essentially comes in two colours: terracotta and grey. You can buy more expensive coloured clay but it usually comes with added grog (bits) to add structure to your pots, which is not pleasant for mud play, and contains extra pigment that stains your bathroom!

Terracotta clay is kind of light brown, but looks orange under bright light and has a lot of pigment in it. In contrast, grey clay has very little pigment, but doesn't have a colour outside of the black and white range, so makes it look like you are shooting in B&W when totally covered. I recently tried a blend of both the grey and terracotta. Which mud looks the most exciting visually?

I think the problem with the grey is it makes the picture look like it is monochrome. I paid for a colour license and I demand colour pictures!

L x

Interesting. I've always thought the darker the better. I've often used bentonite rather than pottery clay, and this is a very pale, creamy grey colour. I usually add a generous amount of black poster paint to it until it looks suitably grimy. Pale clay just doesn't look "dirty" enough for me - I'm aiming for "completely ruined after falling into the swamp", rather than "having a nice clay face-pack in the spa" look!

I chose brown as that's the closest color to 'real mud'......

I never concluded this one! I think the poll suggests that some pigment is good to escape the monochromaticness of the grey. To my surprise, orange was as popular as brown, which was enlightening.

Grey is by far the easiest to clean (no added pigment to stain), so a mix of grey and terracotta will probably continue to be the best compromise for me for a while.

So I guess this is a question you get pretty often, but how do you 'clean-up' with all the 'mess' you made ???

As requested, how I clean up:

1. I scrape as much clay as I can back into the barrel's - I have two now.
2. I use a squeegee to scrape as much off me as I can and then to scrape the bath clean as I can. This also goes back in the barrel. At this point 98% of the clay is back where it started, in the barrel, and can be sealed to keep it moist until next time!
3. Once the and I bath are just dirty with a thin layer of clay, I can't scrape any meaningful amounts of mud to put back in the barrel, I run a deep warm bath with the objective of dissolving any remaining clay into the water to be flushed away. I've found a flannel to be highly effective at washing clay off skin, hair, etc.
4. I make sure that any clay around the bath has also been diluted/dissolved in the water and that I am not caked, but I will still be pretty grubby at this point. I empty the bath, undulating the water as it empties to encourage as many of the fine particles to drain as possible.
5. I completely fill the bath with cold water and then let it drain to flush out the u-bend the best it can.
6. I usually clean remaining clay smears on the walls or other surfaces, and then steam mop the floor twice. Clay is much more visible once dry than wet!
7. I farmer's walk the barrels down the stairs and into my tool store.
8. I have a proper bath to get 100% clean.
9. I use a cloth to clean up any spatters I've missed so far to try and remove all signs of what I've been up to.
10. The mats and other items I previously removed from the bath room goes back in, as it nothing ever happened!

Most of the video below still stands, but I now buy clay from a pottery supplier and have 100Kg instead of 10!

https://umd.net/profile/i/muddddy/section/videos/video/how-i-do-this

Thanks for your reply and 'F**K !!!, I'm jealous........

I live in an older apartment building , (2 stories, I live upstairs......), and after cloggin' the tub up several times, went and bought a 'Plumber's Snake', as I didn't want to have to let the 'maintenance guy's'.......know what I did with the tub and why it was backed-up..........