2015 Progress Report: December

While the rest of the world is currently living in 2016, I'm still living in 2015. I apologize for taking so long to post these. I'm not going to say too much right now. I completed 25 projects in 2015 and I'm happy about that. The only other thing I can say for right now is that 2016 will be full of surprises!

12/2/15: This survived the bisque firing. Despite its small size, the piece is surprsingly heavy.

12/2/15: This survived the bisque firing. Like the other one, the tail at the top broke off prior to the firing.

12/2/15: The final piece of the year that survived the bisque firing (not counting the sagger pieces that were refired). In 2015, I did not have a single ceramic project that exploded during the firings.

12/2/15: After being dissatisfied with the initial results of this sagger piece, I had it bisque fired so I could start over again.

12/2/15: The same thing as before. I wasn't satisfied so I had everything done away with. Out of the three Sagger firings I did, two of them had to be done over again.

12/8/15: Strangely enough, only one side of this raku piece turned out okay. So I decided to glaze it again and have it refired.

12/8/15: This piece is glazed and ready to go to the raku kiln.

12/8/15: Even after glazing this, I tried to make sure that the texture work was going to be intact after firing.

12/9/15: This i the one sagger piece that didn't need to be done again. It looks much better now that I polished is.

12/9/15: This is the final results of the second sagger piece. At this stage, it has not been polished yet.

12/9/15: The final results of the third sagger piece. At this point, I had not polished it yet.

12/16/15: Doing the label for this one was tricky.

12/16/15: The label work for this one was much easier.

12/16/15: Some people ask how I come up with the names for these pieces. With work like this, the name usually doesn't come along until the end. The process of naming these often involves a lot of reflecting on my time with the project and thinking about what I'm seeing when I'm looking at the near-final product.

12/16/15: Soft molding paste work and painting is done.

12/16/15: Quite a bit of molding paste work was needed here.

12/16/15: The felt is in place and the polymer gloss has been applied. This project is done.

12/16/15: This one is finally done.

12/16/15: I'm getting one after the other done. The others would have to wait.

12/30/15: Another tricky piece for applying a label. I personally don't like the labeling work I did here. It's a little sloppy in my opinion.

12/30/15: This one was a little tricky as well even though the large labels are usually easier to work with.

12/30/15: I didn't have too many problems with this one.

12/30/15: I'm finally done here.

12/30/15: This was a pain in the ass but it is done.

12/30/15: I managed to complete 25 projects in 2015 and this is the last one.