The End is Nigh
Saturday was the last day for wet clay. I couldn't really do anything new on the wheel, mainly because it wouldn't dry fast enough to trim or to be ready to be bisqued in time for this coming Saturday, which will be Glaze Day. I did manage to trim my final cylinder-thing without destroying it, so yay. I completely forgot to take a photo though, because Saturday was really quite hectic.
We did a raku firing, which ate up a lot of time; first I had to paint my dragon with raku glazes, like so:
I always think it's neat to see what the glazes look like first. Some of the newbies kept thinking the final color would look like the color when it's not yet fired, and that's definitely not always the case. I put white crackle on the shell (though alas, it didn't really crackle), alligator rust on the main body, glass red on the spines, black on the eyes, and a new glaze on the wings. It was technically a regular low-fire glaze, I believe, but our teacher speculated that it might do something interesting with raku due to having copper in it. It was supposed to come out a turquoise kind of color, and it pretty much just did that. It didn't seem to do anything funny or metallic. No big; it still looks fabulous. I did get some amazing reduction on the alligator rust, resulting in it turning a pretty blue/green color instead of actually looking rusty. It's raku, so one must expect the unexpected. Anyhow here's the final product:
I do still need to work a bit on cleaning it up; it went into my bucket of combustibles face first and a lot of burned newspaper is still stuck on the face (and the egg, though I kind of like the way that looks).
We also unwrapped our saggar pieces. I got some very unexpected colors and patterning on my piece (before being polished up with MinWax):
The white patches are from where I poked holes, and the black is from the pine needles. You can also see the curly marks from the copper wire. The pink is from the stuff we painted on, and the patterning there seems to be just how it ended up with all the fumes and stuff swirling around in there... And finally that crazy bright yellow patch is from Miracle Grow. Interestingly though, the yellow faded considerably as time wore on. Even by that night you can see how much the color changed (this is after being polished):
My teacher said that's because the colors are "fumed" on instead of being a glaze and being integrated into the piece. It is very interesting though. And the color has actually faded a bit more since I took these photos.
I also started working on a little bowl thingy, made out of stoney white clay (because I have a bunch from last session). Lots of people in the class do these serving dishes where they roll out a piece of clay and then cut out pieces using cookie cutters. These are good "last day" pieces because they don't take much finishing after and they dry pretty quickly. I did have to finish mine at home, but it was still pretty quick. Here it is:
It's more than it appears, which is all I can say since it's going to be a gift. :) Let's just say glazing it is going to be fun.
And that was the last day for wet clay. It was just as busy as it always is!
We did a raku firing, which ate up a lot of time; first I had to paint my dragon with raku glazes, like so:
I always think it's neat to see what the glazes look like first. Some of the newbies kept thinking the final color would look like the color when it's not yet fired, and that's definitely not always the case. I put white crackle on the shell (though alas, it didn't really crackle), alligator rust on the main body, glass red on the spines, black on the eyes, and a new glaze on the wings. It was technically a regular low-fire glaze, I believe, but our teacher speculated that it might do something interesting with raku due to having copper in it. It was supposed to come out a turquoise kind of color, and it pretty much just did that. It didn't seem to do anything funny or metallic. No big; it still looks fabulous. I did get some amazing reduction on the alligator rust, resulting in it turning a pretty blue/green color instead of actually looking rusty. It's raku, so one must expect the unexpected. Anyhow here's the final product:
I do still need to work a bit on cleaning it up; it went into my bucket of combustibles face first and a lot of burned newspaper is still stuck on the face (and the egg, though I kind of like the way that looks).
We also unwrapped our saggar pieces. I got some very unexpected colors and patterning on my piece (before being polished up with MinWax):
The white patches are from where I poked holes, and the black is from the pine needles. You can also see the curly marks from the copper wire. The pink is from the stuff we painted on, and the patterning there seems to be just how it ended up with all the fumes and stuff swirling around in there... And finally that crazy bright yellow patch is from Miracle Grow. Interestingly though, the yellow faded considerably as time wore on. Even by that night you can see how much the color changed (this is after being polished):
My teacher said that's because the colors are "fumed" on instead of being a glaze and being integrated into the piece. It is very interesting though. And the color has actually faded a bit more since I took these photos.
I also started working on a little bowl thingy, made out of stoney white clay (because I have a bunch from last session). Lots of people in the class do these serving dishes where they roll out a piece of clay and then cut out pieces using cookie cutters. These are good "last day" pieces because they don't take much finishing after and they dry pretty quickly. I did have to finish mine at home, but it was still pretty quick. Here it is:
It's more than it appears, which is all I can say since it's going to be a gift. :) Let's just say glazing it is going to be fun.
And that was the last day for wet clay. It was just as busy as it always is!
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