Ceramics week 2

Here is the coil pot after it has been done with resist glaze then top glaze and heated up to 1000 degrees, then removed and placed into a container full of wood shavings which then smoulders and permeates into the glaze, and the design i drew is left on the white glaze, after firing the glaze can be removed. I can see why ceramicists get hooked on this type of process, exciting, as there is a great element of chance in the way your The top bowl is painted in a coloured glaze and when fired will  achieve a shiny finish



ceramics

So far we have made coil pots, then smoothed out the surface ready to do naked raku finish. My  first piece I wanted to have some clay coils showing, I felt the shapes were interesting, then I did a pinch pot by hollowing out the inside of a clay ball and shapeing the clay into a jug-like vessel.

 Throwing was very challenging but enjoyable, this will be finished with colour and a shiny type glaze.

Ceramic Project Week One

Have started our two week experiments in ceramics. We are doing naked Raku, I seem to have turned near dyslexic on the word Raku as it comes out Ragu, more Jamie Oliver the naked chef than clay vessels.

 I ventured out at dusk to take some photos for possible starting points,  our brief is urban or natural environments, straight, angular and wavy, I took photos on a building site and some in the countryside. After mark making experiments, I progresed  on to working with clay. my first task was to produce a coil vessel, then smooth the surface for firing with the naked Raku finish

Old Flagstones look like water reflections

taken lying on a floor, look like abstract water reflections,

Happy New Year to all blog readers, went to an exhibition by Daithi O'Hualliachain in Kikenny Castle, he does some interesting portraits woth a look if you are in Kilkenny, there are a couple of other galleries there too, but not all open during the Christmas break.

Print Discards

A mono print is fun and can be done in as little or as much time as the detail you choose to put in to it. After drawing in a festive red ink, strangely it reminds me of snow, I won't bore you with the mono print image that I did, because I liked the discard sheet it had some interesting shapes, so I drew into it for a few mintues r+r.

What to do when your print goes wrong

I have been working on some prints, I was looking at the ones,( which were most of them) that were no good for my purpose. So decided to have some fun with my rejects, I will show you one of the ideas I have done so far, there was a certain satisfaction in chopping up this peice of work, to get to the end result in keeping with my glass shatterimg effect, now I like it.