owl be darned.

it's been almost two years since I initially posted on this; [but a really long time ago] I discovered that a ceramics company had an owl canister that I really wanted to paint [cue the dream sequence music to travel back in time] In the last two years, they added two sizes, and a mug, and I got a set of salt-and-pepper shakers for Christmas this past year. And I realized that I never updated about it at all. The big canister, the Great Horned Owl, is cookie jar sized. The Snowy Owl holds a small bag of brown sugar. The Scopes owl is very small, and holds either hard candy/ a large bag of cough drops or matches and a lighter or what ever else I can think of in small quantity.

As I planned, the canisters turned out to be Hedwig and Pidwidgeon, and the largest owl is a Great Horned, which is something or another in the Harry Potter series. I just don't remember whose.

This really cute necklace was a present for my birthday this year [as were these pants!]




And there was this super cute owl planter that I painted, just because it was there. It's staring at me from across the room holding my sewing scissors, reminding me of something I said earlier, and someone who was staring entirely too much this morning and weirding me out [am I the only person in the world who pops out with randomness when they feel nervous?! some days I swear I must be!] Wise of me to say what I said? Likely not. But I'm highly sensitive about being stared at. Next time it happens, I just might pop out with something [polite] about my skirt being stuck in an awkward place or something, because I'm uncomfortable and I'm tired of it.

Worst picture ever; the top part is more green [seafoam], the bottom is more blue [turquoise]. It's the lighting in the picture.

Have you had enough of the owl goodness? Apparently there's earrings that match the necklace. I'm on a thusfar less than successful man - erm - owl-hunt.

simon's cat

I made these for my Lyd! Lovingly ripped from Simon's mischievous cat, I found images of Cat making a ruckus about being fed, which is pretty consistent with Lyd's behavior at 06:30 in the morning [Google search: "simon's cat+ feed me"] They turned out so well, I think I want to make a few more... They will be living in the store window through the week until the studio/ humane society event this Sunday. Then teh Lydia can eat in style. 

everybody raise a glass

We placed an order with a supplier we haven't used in over a year, and we got these really cute mugs. They were fairly inexpensive, and nicer than the ones of comparable price, and since we still had a truck load at the time, I bought up a bunch.   

These were all taken before the mug was fired. There are five owls total, and I used a technique on the tree and sky called s'graffito, where several layers of a base coat are applied and incised with a design, over which a second color is applied, then wiped off down to the first color. It's a little more apparent post-firing because right now the blues look almost the same. 

 This is probably the most striking s'graffito example on the whole piece, but you can tell looking at the tree that cross-hatching was done for texture. I'm not sure if I'm going to give this one away yet or not. I still have two more blank mugs. I may make another one and decide then.

ceramics, limited

And it's February already. Wow. Blog management has not been high on my list of things to do.I've been trying to get ahead with Christmas presents... it's never too early to find presents for people and squirrel them away. So I've been working on some mugs for people. The other gift related item I've been painting are switchplate and outlet covers. Here are a few covers I did at work. I was experimenting with a specialty glaze for the switch and outlet combo. Be forewarned, I use less-than-laymen's terminology in the following explanations.



The plate on the left is pre-fire, the one on the bottom is post firing. Very, very different! The glazes we use for the majority of pieces are called under-glaze; they're essentially pigmented clay. An under-glaze doesn't run, and the color in the bottle is at least semi-representative of what it will look like when completed. Pink looks pink, purple looks purple and so forth. The intensity of the color is what changes after being fired, but for the most part, you can get an idea of what it will probably look like when done. 





Obviously, the finished piece here doesn't exactly look like the one at the beginning of the process. For starters, it looks like terracotta with bits of stuff stuck in it. Secondly, the polar bears do not look the same from start to finish. They're a little fuzzy. The snow on the bottom of the piece is a white under-glaze with a little grey added (all bisque unpainted fires white), and I wanted there to be some definition between the snow and the bears without the bears being painted yellow. Also, the color is drastically different, and there appear to be little explosions of color in the finished piece. I used for the top part of this plate a true glaze, which is effectively pulverized glass. Clay doesn't run when fired; Glass runs a marathon. I knew from the example tiles that the bits of stuff would result in a puddle of something unusual; what I didn't know was exactly how it would turn out. I think that's the beauty of a pottery or crystalline glaze; it's absolute unpredictability and resulting uniqueness. I chose this crystalline glaze because I wanted to achieve something like the night sky without having to paint stars. It reminds me a little more of falling snow, and for the bears, I feel that is a better setting. In any case, I hope the recipient likes it.


Here is another picture of a pre-fire. This used exclusively under-glazes. It is a gift for some friends, who will appreciate my sentimentality when they see themselves on top of the bluff. It was shamelessly rendered from the image on the right, and I'm a little nervous about how it will come out of the kiln. Did I get the ocean right? Are the trees the right color? Will you be able to tell that I put a couple on the mountain instead of a lone hiker? Will there be any differentiation in the land and islands on the horizon, or is the color not mixed with enough of another tone? Did I miss a spot?! Only 24 hours will tell. That's how long it takes for a kiln to properly cycle.

technique

For a while, at work, we were painting pieces for the dual purpose of not wasting the paper products and having a variety of examples to show people how techniques worked. First up was painting light over dark. I was going through a revisitation of an elephant 

 phase, and looked up Indian elephants and paisley designs. The mottled texture was created with a synthetic sponge using an Olive tone. The elepahant was painted primarily in Green Tea, with Cranberry, Passionate Plum, Just blue, Pacific Salmon and Blue Green details.

We moved onto large spaghetti bowls to demonstrate sgraffito. Which trust me, I can tell you already it's not something you want to try- you probably won't have the time or the patience to execute this technique. And it's a pain.

Sgraffito works by first painting a thick - about three but more is better - coats of glaze on a piece of bisque. My base coat was Olive. You then take a stylus [we use dental picks] and carve out a design. I wanted my things to match, so I stuck with the Elephant/Paisley theme. That's supposed to be a pomegranate in the middle. After the carving is done, you take a secondary color and glaze the piece again, paying particular attention to the carved areas.Again, the more coats the better because when you are done, you have to wipe off the secondary color, but not wipe so much that you remove all the glaze down to the bisque. The idea is that the secondary color fills in the carved out places in the first layer of glaze. The Blue Green paisley swirls were painted on later, as were the little blue dots around the rim. 

I sponged the back of the bowl and glazed it to look like the plate. My wood furniture teacher in undergrad was very fond of encouraging us to do the unexpected, like putting a decorative paper on the underside of small boxes and drawers. It was the little details in overlooked places that made a piece really stand out. 

h00t

We have these owl canisters at work... well, we did. They're so darn cute, they've been flying off the shelves, uhm, no pun intended. See? Even you said, "Aww, hey that's--" Even if you stopped yourself. It's cute.

They come in two sizes, small (4" tall) and cute, and about large (~9" tall) and cute.  It's a canister because the head comes off... which sounds a little disgusting, but it's cute when left alone. Sitting on your counter top. Guarding your caffienated coffee beans....

You know what else is cute? This guy:

It's a Northern (as opposed to Southern) Saw-whet owl. They live in Pennsylvania... and most of the rest of North America. And yes, they are really tiny enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Screech owls are about this big. SO CUTE!!! You have to have special licences from the state and federal governments, and the bird has to be incapable of being reintroduced into the wild, and it's not like a dog you can just put on a leash and take for a walk... rambling, sorry. If I ever was in a place in life where I could do wild life rehab, and the opportunity arose that I could care long term for an owl such as thus, I would. Or something similarly small.

And if you haven't figured out where I'm going with this... well, anyway. My other Brilliant Idea goes something along this order: