Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Final Stretch of Glazing for Fall Ceramics

I was happy to bring home the first of my finished pieces on the weekend, and today I was pleased to finish glazing the remainder.  All but the two pieces which are yet to be bisque fired.  I think those ones will need to wait until the new year, since they've missed the deadline.

Okay, where to start?  Maybe with my favorite bisqueware piece today...
Unique nature-inspired handmade ceramic pottery stoneware bowl in progress.
I love how this plate (not the out-of-focus photo) turned out.  It is brown and green and turquoise slip, sponged over a number of different leaves.  I decided to glaze the back and rim of the plate in green, and the top/inside with Clear glaze, but I sprayed it, just to be sure it is a nice thin coat, and doesn't interfere with the design.   If all goes well, the Clear glaze will make the colors quite vivid.  I can't wait to see this one finished.
Unique nature-inspired handmade ceramic pottery stoneware vase / pot in progress.
There are some young arts students I follow on Instagram, one (see "flacers") who does some cool work with glazing, then wax resist patterns, and glazing with a second color glaze.  I decided to try my hand at it, but as you can see in the photo, the wax resist didn't seem to resist much.  I had even left the wax to dry for a few days, instead of dipping only minutes after applying it, as I usually do.  Anyhow, rather than fiddle with it, I left it like this, and will see what happens during the firing process.  So it is a bit of an experiment, as is most of my ceramics so far.  :-)

Unique nature-inspired handmade ceramic pottery stoneware leaf pendants in progress.
After losing much of the texture of my sunflower leaves to the glaze (see previous post), I decided to try coloring these leaf pendants with an overglaze (stain).  I experimented with some fully stained, some where I sponged off the stain to reveal the veins, and then I sprayed some with Clear glaze, and left others unglazed.  So I'll have lots of different results, and hopefully can figure out which ones were which afterward.  But part of my experimenting was to decide what to do with my Davidii bowl.  At first I also painted the leaves with green overglaze :
Unique nature-inspired handmade ceramic pottery stoneware bowl in progress.

But then I sponged them to reveal more of the leaf texture :
Unique nature-inspired Davidii leaves handmade ceramic pottery stoneware bowl in progress.
I didn't want them to be too pale, since there are no other colors on the bowl.  I decided to glaze the back and rim in Matt Green, and then sprayed a Clear glaze on the top.  I think this could turn out pretty nice.

I should have take a few more photos, for example of the very large banana leaf which I glazed by brush, with Bamboo, then two different green glazes.  I had only used two glaze colors for my smaller banana leaf.  My double-walled vase, I decided to glaze with  yellow, green and then blue (you need to use your imagination at this point) :
Unique handmade double-walled ceramic pottery stoneware vase in progress.

I had a nice rolled and stamped plate go missing in the summer, and never did find it.  I had also wondered if my little swirly-stamped bowl (the last photo in this post) had also disappeared, but I was happy to find it on the very bottom shelf of the bisqueware.  I guess I had not bent down (how low can you go?) far enough to find him on earlier searches.  So I glazed him in Deep Blue, them wiped off the glaze with a sponge, and sprayed him in Clear.  I think this could look pretty cool when finished :
Unique swirly handmade ceramic pottery stoneware bowl in progress.
That's all the photos from today's session.  It was a busy day, I prepared and glazed about a dozen pieces.  But now I'm done for this fall session, and can sit back in anticipation of my pieces being fired and available for pick up over the next few weeks.  I'm sure I'll be posting as soon as they are in my possession.

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