Sunday, May 27, 2012

More decorating

I continue to decorate greenware,
 a couple of vases, mugs and bowls. Also a little footed bowl-- (they sure are hard to get on straight when you put the bowl on top of the base,)
I am really liking the combination of mishima next to the colored areas with slip trailing on the vases.

I'd like to get the vases a bit taller next time,
There is a bit of silk screen stencilling on the bowls,
 I've been making silk-screens, but have to get used to how to use them. 
 These things I decorated a week or so ago, and glazed them a few days ago.
Looking forward to seeing some fired work soon. 
A good thing about getting back to Saskatoon will be to get my kilns hooked up and my little studio working. 

Nb. Mitzi-- I left a mug for you on your shelf at the Clay Spot!

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Patterns for Silk Screening

I want to use some generic type of imagery for silk-screening, that is, some really simple repetition of shapes, rather than figurative images.
I like dots, and so I  made some grids using little dot stickers.  They seem to come in colors and so I colored them black with a sharpie.
Then I stuck them down onto graph paper to make a grid.
 I made a few copies so that I could add other marks on to the grid:
 also made a grid where they are spaced a bit further apart.
 I also drew a sheet with just straight parallel lines, one with wavy lines, one with a square grid, and some with ovals.  I hope to burn some screens this week. 
 However, after using some of my first screens on clay this week, I find that it's sort of tricky to use them on curved surfaces.  I'm wondering about making some tiles.






Tuesday, May 22, 2012

pattern play

 I am learning how to make silkscreens to add more pattern to the surface of the pots
It is interesting, but I need to develop more familiarity with it.
I made a few screens last week, and on Thursday I made some pots with flattish areas to put the pattern on. 
 Monday, I trimmed up the items, and put handles on the two mugs.  I did some decorating at the studio, but wasn't able to concentrate too well, and so I brought a few of the things home to decorate later in the day when I can think better. 
 I'm liking the turquoise, brown and red combo.
 this screen with the little flowers seems to be the most useful one I have made to date.




You daub thick underglaze through the screen on to the surface of the pot, and it helps if the surface is smooth. 

Monday, May 21, 2012

Mishima, glazed!

I went to the studio, and what a nice surprise to find Lisa had fired some of my pieces,
I was quite pleased with how the mishima mugs came out..
 I put "Jade Green" inside all of them, and then some I glazed the outside with clear glaze, and some got the green on the outside as well/

 The handles seem okay after all, although a bit on the larger side,
 The place where the glazes overlap make a nice variation of color,

 Not sure if I like the background with vertical lines, or horizontal.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Mishima in Progress

The inlaid "slip" that I used is really a mix of black and white underglaze, thinned down a bit.  I like the charcoal color better than a jet black.
The leaf-like patterned one in the center has the pattern from top to bottom, whereas the one to its left has a bit of empty space above and below the pattern.  I might put something in that area. 
i'm thinking that the inside of the mugs could have a green glaze, It would be fun to have a bright turquoise, but the studio doesn't have one that color, I don't think,
The flowery ones sort of remind me of molly Hatch ones,
On a couple of the mugs, I tried a technique that I saw on a video demonstration by Erin Furminsky, on Ceramicartsdaily
It has some slip trailed decoration that is quite raised.  Then there are layers of underglaze painted over it all.  Finally you scrape off the layers so that the slip trailing is exposed, and some of the layers of underglaze.  The underglaze had really gotten dry by the time I got back to do the scraping, so I ended up exposing some of the clay body as well, but we'll see how it all turns out.
 Finally for today, this is the butter dish that is hand-built that I made a few weeks ago.  As you can see, we have been using it, and it works pretty well!
 I like the base with it's slip wash, although the texture on the right side wasn't deep enough to hold on to it when I washed it away.  For one of my first hand built pieces, I'm quite happy with how it turned out!
Moon White clay, cone 6, clear satin glaze with glaze stain decoration.

Friday, May 4, 2012

Mug Shapes

 On Wednesday, I threw some mugs to explore some shapes, - I liked the posts on the Fine Mess blog about sketching in 3D, rather than on paper.  Although, I did make some sketches on paper first, but none of my mugs turned out to look much like the pencil sketches. 
I used a bit more clay than usual, it seems, because they all turned out a bit larger than I usually make.  I put the handles on yesterday.
I brought them home to work on a bit further because I wanted to do some mishima and needed to catch them at leather hard stage, and i won't be able to get to the studio for a few days by which time they would prob be too hard.  
1. Similar to what I've been making, but narrower at the top.  Also I think the handle is a bit too big
2.   again, big handle, ???
3. similar to #2,
4. shorter and wider , sort of like an old white glass mug
5. More rounded, with low handle, quite big!
6. much like #5, (they all seemed different when I was throwing them!)
7.  this one just looks upside down to me
8. the smallest of the lot, I added a couple of coils around the base.  very adventurous
9.  I sort of like this one, altho again, the hangle seems sort of large. 
 Why didn't I notice how big the handle wer while I was attaching them?
 Last night I did the "carving" for the mishima, and there were a lot of burrs, so I let them out overnight so that I could brush them off this morning and fill them in
which is what I'm going to do right now!









Thursday, May 3, 2012

Flying Rabbit! and a White Glaze


a floating plate, with flying rabbits! altho a bit blurry,  ca. 1996? (Heorot Pottery, aka me)
I came upon this out there in cyberspace, and since I was thinking of a white glaze, decided to add it to this post so that it won't be photo-less,

So, the white glaze that is the best I've ever used is from Rusty Kurenda, of Saskatoon, Sask., who developed it and shares it freely (to nice people). She is rigorous in her testing standards, freezing it, immersing it into boiling water,...  and through all of that, it doesn't craze.  The other nice thing is that it doesn't have zinc in it, so the colors of the glaze stain decoration don't burn out or go a weird brown.

Prairie Pottery Satin White, Cone 6 Ox
50 Feldspar
6 Flint
19 Whiting
7 Frit 3134
16 Kaolin
12 Superpax

2 Rutile, (to take it a bit off-white)


Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Swoon

I just came upon the website of the UK potter Lawrence McGowan. Wow,what beautiful pots.
I'm posting this on the iPad so I can't insert a link but the screen captures of his work should have the URL on the top edge if you would like to see more.