One nice thing about the hoe is it uses the same amount of energy no matter if its charged up or just hitting a single spot. Clay is kind of hard to get I don't like hoeing dirt for clay much.

Since you might as well get the most out of the activity I would only look for clay with an upgraded hoe if you want to do it on the farm you can hoe weeds for a 2 for one effect (gets rid of the weed, and hoes dirt) sometimes you get mixed seeds.

Better still is to hoe dirt in the mines so you can get clay, cave carrots, ores, and artifacts if you don't get any clay.

winter time is good for clay if you must hoe for it outside the mines. Many more artifact spots spawn and you could get a snow yam or something else.

Just keep hoeing the ground. Everywhere. Artifact spots. Dirt tiles in the mines. Dirt tiles in front of Robin’s house. Everywhere. Do it.

I would just hoe everything that is hoeable

Artifact spots and hoeable dirt in the mines

Try and find a particular artifact... You're almost guaranteed to find clay instead

(Seriously though - hoe every patch of dirt you can, including the beach)

Hoeing dirt or sand.

stardewvalleywiki.com/Clay

Digging on the beach has a higher chance than normal ground

the little squiggles coming out of the ground are a great place to get clay

Spam floors like floor 55 and Hoe the soil!

You can also bomb the soil in the mines for less energy consumption

Plz take mine. It’s all I ever freakin dig up and it drives me absolutely insane

Hoe up the beach and other hoe-able areas like Robin’s front yard.

Maybe this helps

Upgrade the shit out of your hoe and then go to the mines and start tilling. You’ll need the dwarves scrolls eventually anyway

Whenever I need clay, I usually go to the mines. Clay is pretty common there, plus if you're lucky there's a chance for things like artifacts and cave carrots for energy. Always dig up artifact spots when you see them, as clay is a pretty common drop there.

In my experience, if you just hoe every dirt square that has worms on it you'll start to get a pretty good amount!

Get your hoe out and just hoe everything.

Animals can’t die btw

You can get it from hoeing up dirt/sand/artifact spots or from geodes.

digging up dirt/sand

You haven't found it because you're not looking carefully. Slow down and look closely to your surroundings, if you say the area has high rainfall, there has to be clay somewhere. Remember that clay can be either blue-ish or red and grass can grow on top of it.

You can get blue clay from panning, but it takes forever. If you must do it this way, I suggest making bare necessities like cooking pot, bowl, crucible, hammer and pickaxe mold. Finding one clay deposit is much better and you probably missed it, red clay is quite common.

I cant believe nobody else has given you the answer yet. 

Turn on the full color map if you dont already have it enabled, and look for areas of discoloration in the soil. 

Those discolored areas will either be clay, or peat. Both are useful

I all but guarantee there is clay. Keep in mind that clay will grow grass on it, but that this grass won't grow as fully as on dirt. Look for odd, roughly circular patches or take a look at both red and blue colors of clay deposits from the side (they're radically different).

Its not easy to just see, you need to look at the sides of blocks.

I have read about this in many posts.. but I’m playing with the 1.6 update and I have no trouble getting clay at all

https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/23768?tab=posts This is robin sells clay

https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/22521?_gl=1*cj9dj0*_ga*MTMyMzAwNjYwOC4xNzA1NDU4MDQ3*_ga_N0TELNQ37M*MTcxNTQyMjY3Mi4xNzcuMS4xNzE1NDIyNzAwLjAuMC4w This is the extra maps mod I use

Idk how helpful it is, but...

!If you max out all your skills and get into the Mastery Cave, you can make totems that spawn treasure spots on the ground. If you use them on either Stardew or Ginger beach, you'll get a lot of clay. If you use it on the island beach, you'll also get tons of golden coconuts and omi geodes, the latter of which could contain clay.!<

You can also use Stardew Predictor to know in advance what is in the geodes so you know what order to open them to maximize clay. This is a good one for if you're not that close to being able to do what's in the spoiler above.

Ginger island in the mini quarry. It spawns clay rocks.

Also level 15/55/95 of the mines had soil that you can get tons from

Tractor mod is how I’ve managed. Either hoeing the beach or those levels in the mines with the big dirt areas. Can easily zip around switching between hoe and pickaxe to do it over and over again

As people have said. Upgrade how and dig in mines or ginger island is the most reliable.

However there are mods that have Robin sell clay if you don’t mind just buying it. It’s kind of annoying early game.

Personally I use a mod that adds a bunch of locations north of the farm and one of them is a quarry that spawns clay nodes.

There's a method called clay-farming - if you're really good and can use animation cancelling, you can get like, 200 clay in one day, but i think for the average player, you can get maybe 20-40 ish. I think it's a bit difficult to wrap your head around, but i'm sure there's a guide on it somewhere.

'worms' are artifact spots. Any tillable ground can yield clay but not guaranteed to yield anything unless it is an artifact spot. I am constantly pursuing clay. I'm late game so my strategy is different than in early game.

You can use your hoe on dirt and sand, with a bit of luck you'll find some more.

Hi! I suggest going to the mines. Go to the first layer of levels(?) (Level 1-30 to be exact) and dig up the dirt parts there. I forgot the level number but there is this one level where its mostly made of dirt that you can dig. I got so much clay from there c:

Hoe the big dirty floors in the mines. You'll get more cave carrots than clay, but it's all good.

Go to the beach and just hoe everywhere you can. You should get a decent amount. That's how I got enough for my silo :)

The wiggly worms you see in the ground also has a chance of giving like 3 clay. It takes time