Shambling Towards Perfection

Saturday was Glaze Day. I only had 4 pieces for the traditional high-fire glazing, but I also had pieces to raku. The only new piece was the top of my egg, which I completely forgot about the previous week (oops). I also had two older pieces I wanted to re-fire because I didn't like how they'd come out. Here they are before I did anything to them: That's one of the nice things about raku; do-overs aren't too hard to do. There was enough room for my two older pieces, so I reglazed them and they were fired on Saturday in two separate firings (that makes *three* for this session! we apparently love our raku around here!). I put curdle blue on the top part of the butterfly's wings and glass red on the lower part. I also added just a bit more alligator rust to the body. I put white crackle on the head and body of the angel, plus glass red on the wings and in splotches here and there on the rest of the piece. Here they are after applying new glaze, and then after t...

During Saturday's class I was able to finish Cthulhu. Admittedly with a bit of a rush on the legs/feet; they're not quite as nice as I would have liked but this is the last week of pottery, so I was running out of time. There'll be a raku firing on Thursday, and both my horsehair piece and Cthulhu need to be in that one, so Cthulhu had to be finished on Saturday. I actually took the piece home to baby it through the drying stage, so I'll have to take it back tomorrow night so it can get bisque fired before Thursday. The last week is always pretty insane, trying to get stuff finished at the last minute. But anyhow, Cthulhu is all done as far as sculpting goes. I realized last night that so far this summer I've made 4 pieces, each of which will be finished with different techniques. The teapot will be fired in the usual, high fire way, after being painted with underglazes and having a clear glaze applied (I'm hoping). Then the horsehair piece will be rak...