This time I overlapped the colors correctly, but I ran into a little trouble with the wax resist on the vertical areas (see the squiggly circles). Always something!
A positive: the bowl itself is perfect! Nice and round, even walls, not too thick. Yay!!
I’m leaving tulip pots behind for the time being. I really haven’t made any decent cups or mugs yet, so I think I will invest some time in doing so. This is the first Maine Coon cat commemorative cup, in honor of our big male and two kittens (one male and one female) we currently have bouncing around our house. This is a fairly short cup, more like a tea or coffee cup than a mug, hence the short, fat cats. The next ones will be taller and able to hold more liquid as well as drawings of more anatomically correct cats.
The problem I had here (there is always a problem) is that the clear glaze went on too thick on one side of the cup–the side depicting the two kittens. You can see how they’re a bit blurred compared to the larger cat on the other side of the cup. Next time, I’m going to try painting the clear glaze on instead of dipping.
These two small vases came out perfect, but then I started experimenting with glazes (again). What can I say? Every project is a learning project for me since I still know so little about this craft I have taken on!
I used only glazes on these–no underglazes. I applied a white glaze as the base on both vases. I knew that the white glaze had become compromised in some fashion from another student’s mishaps with it. If you look closely, you can see tiny brown specks in the glaze. Those didn’t bother me as much as they bothered her, so I went ahead and used it anyway. Apparently we have to use up the entire (almost full) bucket before the studio monitor will make more. Someone’s got to use it–might as well be me. Anyway! Then I poured some sapphire blue underglaze into a small plastic bottle and fitted on a cap that had a small tube protruding from it for squeezing out the underglaze. I used a medium-sized tube, so it came out very thick. The result was the lefthand vase. Then I got started on the righthand vase. The green went awry because it was much more watery than the blue. I had to incorporate drips into my design, not by design. Oh well. A more advanced student stopped by to investigate and told me that the green is watery (yeah, got that) and that I would have better luck scoring the clay first, then using a thinner tube to squeeze out the underglaze. It’s a good thing that there will be more pots to experiment on.
The other thing I discovered about the tube method for painting on glaze is that the glaze dries in the tube very quickly and jams up the tube. The advanced student suggested having twisty tie wires handy for reaming out the tubes. Another lesson learned.
In the interim between the end of classes in December and the Christmas holidays, there were twice as many open studio sessions as usual and lots of people taking advantage of the time to finish projects, start new projects, or just practice. I was in the just practicing camp and threw quite a few pots, most of which were completed before Christmas. But there were a few that didn’t make it into the kiln. Here is one such bowl on which I was doing more experimenting with underglaze color. Certain colors disappear during glazing, even when using clear glaze on top. But not orange and yellow. Or black.
The other struggle I have had is painting thin even lines on greenware. The freehand design on this bowl clearly indicates the problem. Something to solve.
Ceramiclectia 