Sunday, March 30, 2014

Bowl #3

Here is a photo of Bowl#3. This was a very big bowl, the biggest I have ever made. 5.5 pounds of clay!! and I did it all by myself, centering, making it and then decorate it. I choose to carved because I do like carving a lot and the walls of the bowl were not to thin.

The theme was birds, of course, a bird from Lima, it is red and black, its name is turtupilin, well, that is how we Peruvians call this pretty bird. His real name is Pyrocephalus rubinus, here in the US is called Vermilion Flycatcher. This pretty bird is called in many different way around Latin America  some examples are  mosquero sangretoro,  atrapamoscas, mosquero cardenal, mosquero bermellón, saca tu real, atrapamoscas pechirrojo. 

Tomorrow I have to pick it up from the studio, hopefully the glazes worked well together. I will take some photos on Tuesday in the meantime  here are some photos I took in Instagram, there is also a video there if you feel curious, quality is not the best but gives you and idea.

That's all for today, is a gorgeous day outside and I am out of here :). See you on Tuesday!






Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Tazon de conejitos y tazon de pajaritos/ Bunnies and Birds Bowls

Yesterday I picked up the bowls, they look good. I have many ideas for improving and making more, I am happy with the result specially because these are the first ones that have more than one color. In the past I have made may with the slip trailing tool but I just either sprayed them or dipped them.

Here are the photos:



I have two more bowls, I carved them. One is in the kiln right now and the other is waiting to be painted. I thought I could finish it today, but between the photos, the laundry and cooking (yes it was my turn to cook) and oh yes, I finished the 3 book of the Hunger Games trilogy, I had not time to seat in my little room and find some peace to paint. I will do it tomorrow. 

Let me know what you think, every comment is well received! 



Saturday, March 22, 2014

Four Big Bowls

It is really amazing and scary how fast time goes. The studio opens its doors again the second week of January and right now we are about to start April (!!) And during all this time I have been busy working on new projects, but they just take forever to be ready.

I had accomplished to center and make a 5 pounds or clay bowl yay!! I even think that a 2 of those bowls maybe had more than 5 pounds the weighing scale at the studio is kind of tricky or perhaps I didn't know what I was doing (most likely). Anyway, I made four big bowls, the walls of the first two were a bit thick so I decided to do some carving and the other two I decorated with the slip.

I have been looking the pottery of Carol Long, and I noticed that my work is in a way similar to hers. I love her pottery, she is sooooo amazing!!! She seemed to have found the perfect combination of form and surface decoration the way she glaze her pots wow!

I on the other hand, am still working on that. So, I decided to decorated my bowls in my usual way and keep in mind her glazing technique (I don't really know for certain how she glazes her pots but after looking tons of photos of her FB page, I think I have an idea). When I started the glazing fallowing what I thought was her technique I find out that I was wrong, my glazes run again and again, perhaps her glazes and her slip decorations are thicker? At the end I did what I always do, just painted with brushes instead of the slip trailing tool. although in some areas that tool was very helpful.

On Monday I will be able to see the result, I really can't wait, hopefully the glazes would not run and if they did I hope they do in a nice way. Just one more day to see them.

In the mean time here are the photos of the bowls in greenware state. . . Well, apparently it is not easy to recover photos from instagram to my computer. So while I tried to figure it out how to do it, here is the link, I did some bunnies thinking that eastern is coming and my usual birds on a tree.

I will take normal photos on Tuesday to post them here. You can go to the link and see more photos on my instagram account, and of course you can follow me there as well. See you on Tuesday, I will post the results.

Happy Sunday!

I am back again, I found a way to use my instagram photos on Picasa. Here they are.