Clay /12

I'm back with a huge hoard of clay goodness to share! Over the last few months I've been busy making to fill up a kiln load for firing.  After the first fire it's then a busy couple of days painting all the pieces for the second firing - the exciting glaze fire! In this post I'm going to include a bunch of the pieces at their bisque stage for you to see because I personally love seeing progress shots!

Still loving terracotta!

I really dig the glaze on these guys!

I kept this bowl super simple + natural with just some white slip at the base that I scratched into.

I saw a trick online about making pendants using a syringe which I had to give a go

After months and months I have finally finished Tilikum! So proud that I saw this to completion.  I had an idea in my head right from the start and it turned out exactly as I envisioned (which is rare!).  If you don't know the story or haven't' seen Black Fish, it's a really tragic tale about an orca kept in captivity.  The documentary is definitely worth watching and hopefully my piece makes a little more sense afterwards!

More white slip fun and polka dots!

Another shot of tilikum

Lots and lots of terracotta test tiles

and some glaze testing

Some more fun using the interglaze which you put in between two different glaze types to hopefully get some funky results

I made myself a little paint palette.  
Previously, I was using a cheapo plastic one but a clay version is so much nicer!

A cross inspired by my love of all those beautiful ceramic pieces at the cemetery.  
I realised after making this that I simply can't do those ceramics justice - lesson learned!

A new bowl for peachy which I think lasted a few days before Ben dropped it.  We have concrete floors and they are not forgiving, I dropped my iphone the other week and it instantly went black and never turned back on *sad face*

I made two balls for my tilikum sculpture because I wanted to test different colours and sizes.  I loved them so much that I ended up putting the second one on a pink poodle I made below

I really really love how it turned out

Also 100% digging the underglaze paint kept raw over the terracotta

a shot to see how it looked pre-paint

aerial just for fun!

Some little evil eye pendants

and a fat little dog :P

after the bisque stage

and you can see where I kept some of the raw terracotta showing through

A tile to test out using a little squeezy bottle filled with glaze (not as easy as I thought it would be!)

and some garden markers for my herbs

(Seeing the before photos makes me wonder if I should have painted the words white :P)

Do you have a favourite?

Mine has to be tilikum just because some much love and thought went into him :)

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Clay Wheel

As promised, my first adventures on the wheel :)

I quickly learned that terracotta clay (being nice and soft) was the easiest for me to throw on the wheel 

You can see how different the clay body is before it gets fired!

I haven't glazed all of them just yet, still waiting to put through some at a midfire glaze range but I wanted to share this post with you anyway :)

I made Peachy a new cat bowl because the last bowl (which was hand built) had developed some cracks.

Since this is my first time working with terracotta it's also my first time glazing with it and I have to say, it threw me a curve ball. I love the look of raw terracotta so much that it definitely influenced my reaction to seeing the clay body clear glazed and fired - not a fan.

Since a cat bowl will have food in it and also needs to be washed there isn't really the option to leave the clay raw and porous. I have since thrown another bowl on the wheel and this time I dipped it into white slip - I'll keep you updated on the cat bowl saga!

I kept this pencil holder nice and simple! The clay used is BRT, slightly harder to throw on the wheel but not as difficult as JB1, which you'll be able to see below.

Some more uninspiring glaze work on terracotta!

JB1 - aka poor mans porcelain which I found so hard to throw that I decided to keep the first thing I was able to "successfully" throw on it. Not bad, not great :p

A bowl Ben threw but wasn't impressed with so he let me go crazy on the glaze. I used a combo which came off the glaze test tiles I've been working on :)

Lucky last, a plate which got a 'meh' reaction out of me :p

My plan in the future is to either keep terracotta raw, pour white slip over it or use a black out glaze that completely covers the clay body.

Stay tuned for more clay adventures in the future!

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