Learning the art of sculpture.

Because I'm always interested in learning new techniques to apply to my clay arts knowledge,  I decided to try some sculpture. The studio I frequent was offering a session with a local artist, so I signed up. This past Sunday I spent 5 hours learning the "very basics" of sculpting a head and face. My teacher/artist Ron, was very hands on and we worked together on the piece as he explained how to get all the facial features balanced. While he did help a lot, I feel I can claim the overall style of the piece as my own. I think I expected to work more on my own, but the great thing is I had a very nice finished piece after 5 hours. I shaped the head, gave it a little tilt and made the neck nice and long.

We used an anatomical head formed in plaster of paris as our model. Once I got the basic head shape down, he showed me how to make and add all the features and get them correctly positioned ; eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chin, forehead. It was a real lesson in facial anatomy.  Ears are definitely the hardest.  He would do one side roughly, and then I would finish and refine it and then add the other side myself. She (my sculpture) had a simple straight forward (no pun intended) expression, which is hard enough by itself. I decided on her hair style and added all the hair myself. I was so happy with the result.

I can't wait to do another one, only all by myself this time, and compare the two. I'll post the pictures soon, so check back again.

More completed projects

While I've been spending as much time as I can in the studio and have completed several pieces in the past six months or so, I've neglected to take pictures. So earlier this week I spend several hours photographing some of my more successful ones.

It's been awhile...

It's way past due for some updates. I've in the pottery studio sporadically, and not nearly enough since my day job keeps me very busy. But here are just a couple pics of pieces I've done. I need to get out my camera as I have more pieces to share.

Porcelain Project

Tonight I start a 3 day class at Desert Dragon Pottery to learn the art of speciality glazing on porcelain. I threw six "shouldered" pieces each with its own little drip tray. I can't wait to see how this goes. Let's hope most of my pieces make it through the firing process. I'll keep you posted.

In the meantime, I have several new completed hand built pieces that  I will post as soon as I get some good pictures of them.

I'm getting behind

I wish I was better at keeping this journal current. I've been working so many hours at my "paying" job that after I come home, I'm not interested in even looking at a computer. I've only been able to get to the pottery studio once a week on Friday afternoons. That is MY time to de-stress and relax from a busy week.

I'd love to put up a picture of the latest sgrafitto plate I made, but it was ruined in the bisque fire kiln when the person loading the kiln forgot to stilt it because they didn't know it was glazed on the underside. They assumed it was red clay and not red glaze. I've had several pieces ruined in the past several months, one of which is a French Butter Dish. That one made it through the glaze firing process and then the lid wasn't handled properly and was broken after it was removed from the kiln... Several other simpler smaller thrown bowls made it through, but had particles and chunks of stuff from the kiln firing landed in the bottom of 2 of them. This will require grinding away the "stuff" from the bottom of the bowls, adding more glaze and then re-firing.

However, I did finish one project that I'm very excited about. A large hand-built (not thrown on the wheel) bowl. It's bigger than anything I could have thrown and it was my first attempt. I started by rolling out sheets of clay on the slab roller, cutting them into abstract pieces and then laying them over the outside of large bowl. After it dried to leather hardness but was still soft enough manipulate, I I trimmed the edges to look ragged, flipped it inside another bowl of the same size and shape and then smoothed out the inside. I covered it in plastic again, leaving it for several more days and then moved it back to the outside of the form again ( I had two bowls the same size and shape which is why this worked). I continued to smooth out all the edges where the slab pieces were layered and adding my finger indentations to give it a handmade look. It came out so great that many people have asked if it was a thrown bowl.

So, this bowl came out beautifully in the kiln, which was really good since I had the most time invested in it.

Trimming

I had four pieces to trim yesterday all of which took way too long. I'm on my third attempt at a butter dish. I can't remember what these are actually called, they are the type where you put the butter inside a crock, turn the crock up side down and set it inside another crock filled with cold water. You are supposed to be able to leave the butter out on your table or counter top, unrefrigerated, and the water will keep the butter fresh. (You do have to change the water every day or so.) They are fun when you have friends over for dinner as it's better than just setting out a plastic tub of something and are a great conversation piece when your friends try to figure out how to use it. I've found that you do have to use real butter, because the other stuff will just melt and fall into the water which is kind of gross. I digress...

As I said this was my 3rd attempt because these little pieces are not easy since you have to measure a lot to make sure the one piece fits inside the other piece. Well of course, I measured but it still didn't fit since the crock part that goes inside the other part was too long or else the other part was not deep enough, whatever. Being determined to make this work, I carved and trimmed and carved some more until I made it fit. I can say this, the section that holds the butter is kinda small now, so it won't hold a lot of butter.. but it should still work.  I've got to look up the name for this thing...

The other pieces were just regular thrown bowls. The one bowl was so dry by the time I trimmed it that it was almost too late. The best I could do was clean it up a bit on the bottom and smooth it out. It flew off the wheel one time (oops) while I was trimming and broke a chunk off the rim... Ok so now it's got a nice scalloped rim all the way around. Isn't necessity the mother of invention?  I'll post the pics after they're bisque fired and then after they are glazed.

Finished High Fire Projects

Yesterday yielded some great results from the last hire firing at Desert Dragon. I am particularly pleased with my tall coil pot/vase. Glazing any piece that you've spent a long time on (I actually dreamed about this one) creates anxiety for me since I am still learning glazing techniques. (Does the learning process with clay every stop?) Applying glazes you know will run A LOT as I did on my coil pot, made me very nervous, so I decided to wipe it down leaving the bare stoneware in places. The result was very good. The imperfections are what make each piece unique and "hand made".

The pie dish (at least that's what I'm calling it) turned out well also, although the glazing choices with turquoise and woo blue (which looks like blue denim by itself) turned out a little muddy in places. Turquoise runs a lot and woo blue is very reliable at not running, ever. But who wants to glaze everything in woo blue all the time.