Different types of clay?

You need to jump in there and start really enjoying clay building. I would hate for someone who is so inclined not to try it out, If you need help finding classes of basic handbuilding, try your nearest hobby or craft store. They should know of community and art centers with starting classes. You might befriend a potter who lives nearby to do some firing for you. I used to fire small pieces of the work of others that I could fit into spaces in my kiln. Find a distributor of clay in your area or go to an internet email list of potters and ask for someone in your area.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/clayart/

and others...good luck and have fun learning and playing in clay

Your experience with polymer clay is fine

There is an older world of ceramic clay that you can explore if you are interested

I am a president of a studio starting enrollment in spring classes You probably are not close but we are part of a group that shares information

Here is a list of places that have ceramic classes- yes we are on the list

http://ceramicartsdaily.org/education/classes/

Classes include instruction and some materials and firing.

Other studios are similar. you might like being part of a class

I hope you find a path to explore

We are a club some of us try other things like polymer clay , paper mache, epoxy clays

We talk and learn from each other admittedly we spent a large part of our learning and tools and chemicals in several versions of ceramics. We have the kilns as a group

You don't mention how big your "big" figures would be. Polymer clayers made loads of sculpted figures that may be even a foot tall and quite sturdy, but sculpts that large will need to have permanent armatures underneath (which is common), and also polymer clay shouldn't be thicker than 1 1/4" in any area because baking can then cause cracking.

How sturdy they will be will also depend on the brand and line of polymer clay used too. (Earth clay is breakable though, of course... polymer clay is plastic so all brands/line will be quite strong if thick and rounded.)

Check out some of these polymer clay sculpts of figures just to get some ideas of what can be done(most of these are more realistic sculpts, but simpler more graphic ones can be made too of course:

http://www.elvenwork.com/archive/archive1.html

http://www.funclay.com/Galleries/Royalty/index.htm...

https://www.google.com/images?q=polymer+clay+sculp...

https://www.google.com/images?q=polymer+clay+sculp...

For more info, check out the sculpting pages at my site, plus the armatures page:

http://glassattic.com/polymer/sculpture.htm

http://glassattic.com/polymer/sculpting_body_and_t...

http://glassattic.com/polymer/heads_masks.htm

http://glassattic.com/polymer/armatures-perm.htm

For incense burners where the hot *coal* will actually need to be in *direct contact* with the clay you use, you'd want to go with some kind of earth clay, and you'd probably want to fire it (in a kiln), although you could use an unfired one too like Mexican Pottery Clay.

If you want to use a polymer clay or some other kind of air-dry clay that's not earth clay, you can do that but you'll need to make the place where the cones sit, or the place where the sticks burn down to, from some other material like metal or glass and make the rest of the incense holder from the clays.

You can see some polymer clay incense holders here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=polymer+clay+incen...

As for paints to use for the air-dry clays that aren't fired in a kiln, you can use any permanent paint but I don't think most would be okay touching a hot coal...some dyes might work or inks, etc.

Only certain types of paint should be used directly on polymer clay (acrylics are the usual ones), and the same restriction would apply. Polymer clay comes in colors though so isn't usually painted, though it can be.

As for "little bowls and cups," how large would they be?

If you're interested in polymer clay especially, you could make them miniatures, or much larger, just depending on which you want.

For miniatures, check this page:

http://glassattic.com/polymer/miniatures.htm > Dishware, Bakeware

For larger ones, check this page at least:

(this link moved to just below)