Clay /9

So the other day I showed you the bisque and now it's time to show the final outcomes! To be fair, it's not all the clay as every glaze has a different firing temp.  These guys are the low range (we still need to do a high fire range) but to justify that firing we need to make more clay - welcome to the never ending cycle of ceramics :) :)

Lucky cats!

These guys have been waiting a long time to be fired but I'm pretty stoked at how they turned out :) 

A look inside the second firing! It's like Christmas opening the kiln door and then moments later followed by, "oh I could of chosen a better colour than that" :p

Point in case! Lol! 

Now that I have my test tiles, I should be more wise with colour choices and paint application - this glaze could have been magical if I would have done it super thick!

This guy was my favourite!

Do you remember my smoothing/breaking woes? Well this guy was only slightly smoothed and I think he turned out fine for that effort :)

Mr. cockatoo, mmm, not sure! I do dig the dots, but the yellow I used was so bright! We do have a softer yellow but I didn't realise until doing the test tiles and comparing the colours. I do regret doing the tips of his wings yellow, I might try and paint over and re-fire him, athough that can be risky.

Pretty Mermaid - sucker for a white/pink/black combo

Super super love for this guy despite his tail and foot being broken (although I was already aware of the breakage so less heartbreaking). What I love about this guy is that I tried to walk that fine art line with him. I already loved how the kangaroo paw came out on my last kangaroo planter but I wanted to devote a bit more time to sculpting + design. Unfortunately that extra time meant I broke him - ha! But hey, you're always trying to grow as an artist right?

I gave up on these beads when I saw them (they also take the most time out of any clay making which made their mediocre even more heartbreaking). Fast forward a few days later when I was on a walk and it came to me to just string them up before giving up and hey presto, now I love my new necklaces :)

 Also, I ripped off Ben who has been making ceramic bead jewelry way before me :p

Another angle of the kangaroo :)

The magical test tiles I keep talking about. I have a bunch more ready to go in the higher temp range as well. You can also see here the super bright yellow on the bottom row (which I used on the cockatoo) and the more mellow yellow above it which I think would haven been a smarter choice.

And lucky last Mr. bandicoot. He was going to be a test on whether or not I could skip the sanding stage and errr, skipping that stage is a thumbs down from me. I've seen some incredible sculptural pieces using the texture of the clay to their advantage but for me putting in that extra smoothing effort results in pieces I'm happier with, so for now, I'm going to keep sanding and hope that my rough handed-ness can become a little softer :p I think a 70% sanding effort might be the magic number!