Shambling Towards Perfection

I continued working on surface decorating at last night's class. Over the weekend I had finished the sgraffito piece, so I just had to set it out to dry: I call this one "Apatosaurus Under the Rising Sun". Or something. Anyway I quite like how it came out, though it was a little difficult keeping the edges of the carving smooth. I also made a third plate with the scraps from the last 2 plates (which was a weird pain; the scraps didn't seem that dry but were very hard, so it took a ton of wedging): It's not very exciting yet, because I want to do slip trailing on this one. That means using a squirt bottle type thing with a very thin nozzle to draw a design on the clay using an underglaze. Unfortunately the underglazes have to be prepped for that. They have to be pretty runny and there needs to not be any clumps, so they actually get forced through a sieve. Our teacher will work on that before the next class, so I'll be able to finish this on Saturday. ...

Saturday was the second class. I just continued work on the things I started in the first session, primarily making small plates of cone 5 b-mix to experiment with different surface decoration techniques. I finished this plate using the mishima technique: That means I carved the design into the leather hard clay, then painted it with colored underglaze. After that dried I wiped away the excess with a damp sponge, leaving only the lines colored. Unfortunately I think I had my sponge a little too damp, so in some places too much of the underglaze was washed off. I'm hoping I can touch this up after it's bisqued, if necessary. I call this one "T-Rex Under the Moon". Next, I made a second small plate: This guy was painted with underglaze when it was leather hard, and then at home I carved a design into it, per the sgraffito technique. So it's basically the opposite of the other plate. I'll post pics for that later. It turned out mostly ok, though the lines...